The Other Way
by Slavok
Summary: Taylor Hebert had never wanted to become a villain. That just happened as she made one desperate choice after another until she got in too deep to get out. This time, her journey as a cape leads her the other way.
1. Chapter 1

The Other Way

Chapter One

Taylor stood on a rooftop with three super villains. That was par for the course for being a cape. Still, she had hoped for more open hostility and mental chess games when facing bad guys, if only for a refreshing change of pace from veiled hostility and emotional abuse of high school.

She had _not_ been expecting gratitude, openness, and job offers.

Tattletale–_Lisa_–smiled at her. "If you want the full scoop, I'm afraid the details on what we do only come with team membership. What I can tell you is that we're a good group. Our track record is top notch, and we're in it for fun and profit. No grand agenda. No real responsibility."

The full scoop. _That_ interested Taylor than the lunchbox full of cash. They had a boss, someone footing the bills and pulling the strings? She learned a few things coming here, just their faces and their names (though their names could have been faked), but unless Taylor could hold on to their faces long enough to find a sketch artist who wouldn't ask too many questions, that information didn't seem that helpful.

If she _did_ go the double agent route, what happened then? She'd get more information on them, maybe enough to put them away along with their mysterious boss, but ...

If she got these Undersiders arrested, they weren't going to the Birdcage. Maybe Brian was a legal adult, barely, but that was it. They would get a few years in a juvenile detention center at most, and nothing if they slipped away. Either way, they'd come after her with a vengeance, and depending on how much they knew about her by the time she knew enough about _them_, they might come after her dad, too.

Really, it wasn't too different from her situation in school. Did she trust the authorities to protect her enough to help them? Or help them help her? At school, definitely not. Here? Well, if Tattletale had some sort of precognitive danger sense then getting them arrested would be like flipping a coin, and keeping them in a normal prisons was like flipping another coin.

"Do you mind if I take a few days to think about this?" she asked.

"Absolutely," Brian said easily. "It's a standing offer. Take all the time you need."

Taylor looked down at the lunchbox. Alexandria posed heroically on the front, but still seemed to judge her for being too cautious.

"And like I said from the start," he added, "the money's yours. No strings attached."

"I'll keep in touch," she lied.

WWW

With the rest of the day to herself, Taylor went shopping. Her fight with Lung had told her that a few EpiPens, a can of pepper spray, and a bag of chalk dust had limits. As a cape, she needed a few more tricks up her sleeve.

First off, she bought another backpack. It would get vandalized or stolen within the month at the rate she was going through them, but at twelve bucks a pop she could buy them in bulk if she wanted to. She dumped the rest of the money inside and threw away the lunchbox, just in case there was a tracking device inside.

She also filled the backpack with spiders. Carrying nearly two grand in cash on her person was a bad idea in general, and if she couldn't avoid getting mugged, then she could at least give her would-be mugger a bad day.

After that, she got a baton. It was light-weight, collapsible, and easy to carry. The cheap ones were ten bucks, but since she'd be betting her life on these she got one of the better ones. Two of the better ones. Sixty bucks.

She wanted to get a taser too, but those were _expensive,_ sometimes up to a thousand dollars. She could afford it, sure, but she wouldn't have much left for whatever else she might need, and pulling out that much cash at once would raise eyebrows.

Stun guns though, were a fraction of the price. They didn't have any range, but if the enemy was fifteen feet away, Taylor had other options that were less likely to miss. There was still one problem.

"Got picture ID?" the cashier asked.

She hesitated. "What for?"

"Can't sell stun guns to minors. They're _guns,_ see? Dangerous."

Taylor frowned. "Do I need to be over eighteen to be attacked by gangsters?" _Or super villains?_

"Nope."

"But I need to be over eighteen to buy a stun gun."

"Yup."

"How come?"

The cashier shrugged. "I guess politicians hate kids." That ... that was really the best explanation Taylor had ever heard of for public education. "You got a parent or something around here?"

"Yeah," she said slowly. "I'll be right back."

Taylor could have gone home and asked her dad to buy it for her, and he would have just like he got her the can of mace. But she had spent the last few months telling him that he worried too much, that the jogging routes she took were perfectly safe, and he didn't need to stay up at night worrying about her. Asking him to buy her weapons would be ... counterproductive.

So she walked a few blocks away from the mall, found a homeless man who didn't seem too creepy, and hired him to pretend to be her father. It was the best fifty dollars she had ever spent.

"I would like this thingy and, uh, this one?" he said

"This one," Taylor said.

"Right. And this one for my darling baby girl," Jerry said. Taylor had settled on the highest voltage she could buy as well as a less powerful one that could double as a flashlight. Backups were important, she thought.

The cashier looked at both of them. They didn't look much alike, and Jerry the homeless person dressed like, well, a homeless person, but Taylor dressed like one too, nearly. He shrugged and rang them up. "That will be $71.14."

"Nothing's too good for my little, uh, Angelina here, no sir," Jerry rambled while Taylor pulled a few twenties out of her pocket. "Once I came across a charming young woman who invited me to her van with the promise of carnal delights, and I woke up the next morning without a kidney. I guess she didn't want the other one much, but that there was when I decided to play it safe, and I have ever since. So when my little, uh, Angelina gets spooked by strange men with ill intent, I says to myself, 'Jerry, don't just get your little girl a box of condoms like your parents did for you, go and get her the full vasectomy.'"

"Uh, sir? I think your 'daughter' left?"

Jerry looked around. "Well, shoot."

"Also, here's your change."

"Oh. Well thank you very much. And God bless."

WWW

Later after her dad had gone to bed, Taylor snuck into the basement, put on her costume, and went out for another night on the town, looking for trouble. It was a bad idea, she knew. Her dad had noticed her sneaking out the night before and was going to be concerned if this turned out to be a habit, but Taylor was going to have to endure seven long hours of high school the next day, and she deserved at _least _another hour of being a cape to put up with it.

Or maybe she was already an addict, trying to get her fix. Either way, she was on her way out.

She considered heading back to the docks like she had the night before, but only Lung had been captured, and the rest of his men would have told the others about how they were swarmed by wasps before Lung exploded. She didn't want to risk running into the Undersiders while doing something heroic either. Besides, her dad had always warned her about varying her routes, and she figured that held true to cape stuff as well as it did to running.

That left boardwalk and the downtown area. Boardwalk didn't have much crime, unless you counted the Enforcers, who punished shoplifters and pickpockets with the same ruthless brutality that they went after beggars and loiterers. Okay, they were a scummy lot, but even if Taylor went after them, she couldn't get them arrested. They were violent thugs, but they made boardwalk look good for tourists, and the city was willing to leave them be.

Another option would be to track down some drug dealers. The ... what were they called? The Something Merchants were a group of small time drug dealers. The Bridge Merchants? Archer Merchants? Something like that. From what Taylor had read on PHO, there were probably a few capes at the top, but her encounter with Lung from the night before suggested that she might be better off going after non-powered people anyway. She could send her swarm after a few druggies and ... no, that was dumb. She could follow some druggies, tagging them with her bugs so she could stay out of sight until she found out where they were keeping their supply. How would the Merchants respond to watching a warehouse full of narcotics consumed by ravenous cockroaches? It might take a while, but it would be easy, safe, and if it all worked out she wouldn't even be seen.

The last option was the Empire Eighty-Eight, a gang of white supremacists who couldn't remember who won the second world war. They controlled most of the downtown area, and while the Merchants mostly hurt themselves and their customers, you couldn't even become a member without assaulting an "acceptable target." While other gangs made money by charging for protection, drug trafficking, or even sex trafficking, the E88 had built itself up as a business of hatred.

It was also the strongest gang in Brockton Bay, now that Lung was incarcerated. From what she'd read, they had as many capes as the rest of the villains combined. Heck, the Empire probably thought Taylor had done them a favor by tipping the balance of power toward them. With that in mind, she started jogging downtown. Her reputation as a superhero had already taken some hits. She wasn't about to let a group of Neo Nazis to mistake her for a friend.

WWW

Taylor stayed away from large crowds, scouting out with her bugs to avoid getting cornered by large groups of people. Small groups of people avoided _her_, noting her costume and crossing the street to get out of her way. Still, she stuck to the side roads and dark alleys, trusting in her bugs' senses to keep her out of any trouble she couldn't handle.

She sent her swarm out ahead of her, and had her bugs land on people as they passed. Soon she had dozens of them, perched on shoes and pant legs, giving her a partial picture of the streets in front of her. Moving bugs were on walkers, stationary bugs were on people standing still. Pairs meant couples (or someone with very wide legs), solitary bugs meant loners, and groups meant ... groups.

She heard a scream. She ran towards it even as she coated the area with bugs to get a better picture. It was close, just a block away on the other side of Lord Street in a small gap between buildings. She could see ... someone–no, two people, moving around in close contact. She couldn't tell with just her swarm which was the attacker and which was the defender.

She ran across Lord Street–and only a bug on a windshield warned her of a car coming her way. It honked as it passed, barely missing her. It would have been the perfect end to her superhero career if she were to die on her second night out because she forgot to look both ways.

Didn't matter. She was close enough to see the fight with her own eyes now instead of with her swarm. Only, it wasn't a fight anymore. She was close enough to see the beating.

The victim had fallen to the ground, and the attacker–a man on the bigger side of average with a shaved head–was kicking her repeatedly. That was ... pretty much the sort of violence Taylor had been looking for.

But while the assault wasn't going on in broad daylight, the man wasn't being discrete, either. Three others had stopped to watch like he was some street performer, and people walking down the sidewalk glanced down the alley like they were peering into a store window before moving on.

_That_ got to her more than anything. She had come to terms with cruelty. She didn't like to admit it, but she had enjoyed attacking Lung where it would hurt the most more than a hero strictly should. But _indifference_? Looking the other way while someone was screaming for help? No. Traditionally, a hero should look out for innocent bystanders, but Taylor couldn't see _any _of them as innocent.

She attacked them all. Her swarm came down, stinging and biting anyone who was still standing. The perpetrator got the worst of it, but Taylor spared _no one_. The passing crowd was willing to ignore the victim who was being beaten to a pulp? Well, they wouldn't ignore her.

They all ran, leaving Taylor alone with the woman lying on the ground. She planted a collection of bugs on the attacker, but she could save him for later. He wasn't a priority.

Taylor knelt down beside the woman and pulled out her flashlight/stun gun to get a look at her. She had dark brown skin and straight black hair and looked to be in her early twenties. Her nose looked broken, she had bruises around her eyes, and her lips were swollen and bleeding. She was breathing, fortunately, but she didn't react to the light shining in her eyes.

Taylor thought back to the first aid class she had taken online after she had taken after she had decided to become a cape. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but without a first aid kit, she couldn't clean, bandage, or stitch anything. Should she treat her for shock? That was all she could think of.

"Can you hear me?" Taylor asked. "Can you tell me your name?"

There was no response. Ideally, Taylor should roll the woman onto her back and elevate her feet to help circulation, but if she had a neck or spine injury, moving her could paralyze her for life. Besides, she was bleeding from the mouth, so Taylor should keep her on her side where she was so she wouldn't choke.

_Idiot!_ she thought. The _first _thing she should have done was call an ambulance. That was literally step one of _any _first aid treatment.

And she didn't have a phone.

She went on an entire shopping spree that afternoon, trying to spend two grand as fast as she could for better cape gear, and she had no way to call for help. Heck, she had even gone out of her way to scare off anyone who might have been able to call for her!

_Stupid, stupid, stupid!_

Wait, this woman was assaulted, but she hadn't been mugged, had she? The attacker had left in a hurry and hadn't had time to grab anything. Taylor could still sense the bugs she had planted on him about a block away. He had stopped running after he decided that he wasn't being chased. If the woman had a phone on her ...

She patted down her pockets, feeling self-conscious that she was doing it without permission. She found a card (credit card, maybe), a key, and a folded up piece of paper, but no phone. There was the pocket on her other side, but Taylor couldn't reach it without rolling her over.

Maybe there was ... yes! A purse. It must have fallen away during the fight, and Taylor found it on the other side of the alley. She picked it up and rifled through the woman's notebooks, pens, a pack of gum, stray pieces of paper, an old candy bar, and ...

She felt something flying through the air, knocking her bugs out of the way, and she heard it a moment later, crashing into the sidewalk with enough force to make the concrete crack.

Glory Girl, blonde, statuesque, and in a costume that reminded Taylor of the Greek goddess Athena, stood up, looked down at the beaten woman, and fixed Taylor with a stare that made her blood freeze.

"Maybe," she said coldly, "you should start running."

That ... that would have been a monumentally stupid idea. Taylor didn't know exactly how fast Glory Girl could fly, but she doubted that she could escape in a car, and the closest thing Brockton Bay had to its own personal Alexandria would see it as an admission of guilt.

"I-I'm one of the good guys." Taylor felt a sense of deja vu from the night before when Armsmaster had shown up, but then she had been so exhausted from her fight with Lung to feel anything but tired. Now? She felt more scared of Glory Girl than she ever had of Lung. Against Lung, Taylor could at least fight back, but against Glory Girl? Fighting her would only make Taylor look like the villain that she kept saying she wasn't.

"You don't look like one."

_Well, sorry for going out in a homemade costume! Sorry I didn't have my own costume designer dedicated to making me look good!_

Taylor didn't say that, but she gritted her teeth. She'd had enough of people criticizing her appearance while at school. She'd had enough of situations were people assumed she was wrong just by looking at her. And she had had _enough_ of being put in positions where she couldn't do anything but take the abuse.

She had put up with that for years as a gangly, awkward teenager. There was no way in _hell _that she was going to put up with it as a cape.

There were a dozen things she could have said to diffuse the situation. She ignored all of them.

"Tough."

WWW

A/n I discovered Worm a few weeks ago, and if you haven't read it ... then you should instead of wasting your time on cheap fanfics. But if you haven't read it, it's less like an emotional roller coaster and more like a 1.5 million word heart attack, and it was amazing. Usually when I read something I really like, I write a fanfic about it to deal with the fact that it ended before its time. With Worm, I was looking forward to writing a fanfic only a few arcs into it and even reading it a second time around because it was just that good.

Like I said in the summary, Taylor's going to be an official hero from the start instead of taking an extended detour through villainy, and this story is going to be significantly less grimdark. So basically I'm taking a grimdark story about a villain protagonist, and make it a noblebright story about a hero protagonist. Fanfiction is weird.

As for her cape name, I honestly haven't settled on one. I think of her mostly as Skitter, but that was her villain name and she admitted that she didn't really like it. Weaver was her hero name, so that's an option. I read that in one of the earlier drafts she had the name Myriad because she could control a myriad of bugs, so that's technically an option too.

Of course, in canon she didn't get a cape name until after the bank robbery, so there's no rush.


	2. Chapter 2

The Other Way

Chapter Two

It didn't take Taylor long to regret her decision. Coincidentally, it also didn't take very long for Glory Girl to lift her up by the front of her costume and slam her into a brick wall.

"What did you say to me, you Nazi piece of crap?"

_I am so dead! One hundred and ten percent dead!_ "I'm not a Nazi!" A wave of terror washed over her, drowning her in fear. There was only one logical thing she could do in this situation. She panicked. Her swarm attacked, and ten thousand bugs covered every inch of Glory Girl's perfect figure, stinging, biting, and clawing at ... air.

Right. Invulnerability. That was fair. Some people got bug powers, others became invincible.

She also had an aura power. Taylor remembered her discussing it on a talk show, and how it made her enemies nearly wet themselves on sight. Now, if only there was a talk show where capes discussed their greatest weaknesses, and how they could be exploited by insects.

Glory Girl gave the swarm a sneer and flew higher, carrying Taylor up over the surrounding rooftops. Her stomach lurched with vertigo. "You're not? So you beat and rob white people too, huh? An equal-opportunity creep."

_God, if you're there, why do you hate me?_

Was there a way to bypass her invulnerability? Even Alexandria had gotten hurt–once–so Glory Girl had to have _some_ weakness. Maybe if she inhaled pepper spray, it would mess up her lungs? Hurt her from the inside?

Of course, at this point, defeating Glory Girl also meant a fifty foot drop. Mutually assured destruction was not the best way to resolve what was basically a misunderstanding with a superhero.

Taylor only had one choice left, her last, desperate resort.

"Armsmaster can vouch for me."

That, at least, gave her pause. "What?"

"I helped him take down Lung last night. Call him if you don't believe me."

"Really? Well, maybe I will. Don't go anywhere." Taylor dangled helplessly in the air as Glory Girl pulled her phone out of her utility belt. _Utility belt. Need to get one._ "Hello, this is Glory Girl. May I speak with Armsmaster? Yes, I can wait."

Taylor glanced down, wondering if she'd live long enough to overcome her fear of heights. _Not at this rate._ Was that woman still alive, lying half forgotten in the alleyway below them? Taylor planted a gnat on her upper lip to check. She was still breathing.

"He's not?" Glory Girl said into her phone. "What happened? When will he be back? Wednesday? Oh, well, never mind. Yeah, you too." She hung up. "Armsmaster's not in. Got anyone else?"

_Sure, let me just pull out the list of character witnesses I've picked up as my last twenty-four hours as a cape!_ No, no, that wasn't the priority right now. "Look, I don't care how long you want to spend deciding if I'm one of the good guys or not, but that woman down there could be _dying_ right now! _Maybe_ calling an ambulance is more important than wasting your time with me!"

Taylor half expected Glory Girl to drop her after that, but she hesitated, and for a moment she looked worried. She set her down on a rooftop and began dialling. "Don't go anywhere. If I catch you running off, you'll regret it." She flew down to check on the victim.

Taylor looked around, feeling trapped. She had to get out, she had to get out _now_! Any second now Glory Girl was going to come back, beat the crap out of her, and drag her off to prison until either Dad bailed her out or Armsmaster got back from whatever vacation he was on. She sat down to make herself look like she was behaving herself, but sent her swarm out looking for an exit.

The fire escape was the obvious choice, but it led down to the alley where Glory Girl was. _One of these days,_ she thought, _a fire escape is going to be a literal escape, instead of just an ironic one._ She managed to stick a bug on Glory Girl to keep track of her. The shorts she wore under her skirt was as slick as her skin, maybe a side effect of her invulnerability, but the skirt itself was not.

Taylor was looking around for a pipe she could shimmy down or a ledge from an adjacent building she could jump to when Glory Girl returned.

"Well, the paramedics are on their way," she said.

Taylor nodded, sure that anything she said would get her into more trouble.

"As for you, punch me."

"What?"

"You heard me. I want you to punch me as hard as you can."

Was this a trick? Of course it was. Taylor just couldn't figure out what it was for. She shook her head. "That will just give you an excuse to hit me back. Self defense or something."

Glory Girl rolled her eyes. "Listen, kid, do you know who my mother is? Carol Dallon, and she's the best lawyer in the city when it comes to cape law. Right here there aren't any witnesses so it's my word against yours, which means I can do pretty much anything I want to you and get away with it, and what I _want_ is for you to hit me."

Taylor stood up, took a deep breath, and started running. In the opposite direction. Glory Girl flew overhead and landed on the roof in front of her, blocking her path. With nothing else she could do, she drew her fist back and punched Glory Girl in her perfect jawline.

She inhaled sharply and cradled her hand to her chest. She would have been better off punching a brick wall. Had she broken something? _Crap!_

"Wow," Glory Girl said flatly. "That was _incredibly_ bad. Martial artists around the world would _weep_ if they saw that. You've never gotten in a fight in your life, have you?"

"Yes–I–have!" she said through gritted teeth. She would have sounded far less petulant if her eyes weren't watering.

"Okay, fine, but you didn't punch anyone, did you?"

Taylor didn't answer that question, and she didn't have to. She had tiny fists, frail arms, and a power set that didn't include superhuman strength.

"What I'm saying," Glory Girl went on, "is that I don't think you were the one who attacked her. If you were trying to beat her unconscious, she would have gotten bored and wandered off." Taylor glared at her. "That doesn't change the fact that I caught you robbing her when she was down, so I'm still going to have to take you in."

"I wasn't robbing her! I was looking for a phone so I could call for help!"

Glory Girl rolled her eyes. "Yeah. And I'm sure using your own phone never crossed your mind."

"I don't have one."

She blinked. "What do you mean, you don't have a phone? Everyone has a phone!" She sounded _amused_ of all things.

Taylor gritted her teeth. "Well, not me." She didn't owe Glory Girl an explanation, and she didn't feel like telling her about how her mother died in a car accident because she couldn't wait just twenty minutes to make a phone call.

"I'm going to have to search you, just to be sure." Taylor didn't know how her Fourth Amendment Rights applied here, but like Glory Girl had said earlier, she could do anything she wanted and get away with it. _It's like I'm still in school._ "Hey kid, you got any pockets on this onesie?"

Taylor gritted her teeth and was tempted to keep silent just to spite her, but more than that she wanted this _done._ "In the armor on my back." Glory Girl wasn't precisely rough when she spun her around, but it felt like a semi truck was gently trying to nudge her in the right direction.

"Let's see. A stick, a flashlight, a tube of ... lipstick? Oh, pepper spray." Taylor couldn't help but feel violated as Glory Girl rifled through her stuff, like she had a _right_ to. She felt angry ... but not afraid. Either Glory Girl's power had worn off, or she had stopped using it. Did it stop working when no one was looking at her? Regardless, Taylor's mind was clear. For all the good it did. "A bag of, what is this, chalk dust? Why did you even bring this?" She stood back, finished. "But no phone."

Taylor didn't say anything. If Glory Girl was going to realize that she was being an idiot, she could do it on her own.

She shook her head. "Well, this has been a colossal waste of time." She shot her a look, and Taylor was hit with a jolt of giddiness at fulfilling her childhood dream of doing capework with her favorite superhero. That ... was probably Glory Girl still using her power on her. "Hey, did you get there in time to see the thug that did this before he ran off?"

Taylor nodded.

Her aura turned mean again. "Well?" she said, annoyed. "What did he look like? Did he have any distinctive markings or tattoos that I can use to track him down?"

So her power had a nice and a mean setting. There was probably a better term for that, but still, interesting. Naughty and nice? No, that was even worse.

Taylor smiled behind her mask, and hoped that her smugness wouldn't sound in her voice. "I didn't see any, but he's right there," she said, pointing. "Not that building, but the one on the other side of it. He's on the second floor in a room with ... three other people. You'll recognize the attacker by his shaved head covered in welts."

Glory Girl's jaw dropped. _Priceless_. Taylor felt a bit guilty about the satisfaction she was getting out of this, but having someone with flight, strength, and invulnerability being impressed with _her_ powers? That was pretty dang satisfying.

Taylor picked up her discarded equipment, favoring her good hand. "Either you stay here until the ambulance arrives and I'll go after him, or you go after him while I stay. I don't care which."

Glory Girl frowned, and for a moment a look passed across her face that was ... confusion? Recognition? Something in between? "You really don't." She nodded. "The ambulance should be here in a few minutes. Come by when it's done." Glory Girl smiled at her, and Taylor was reminded of a Glory Girl tee-shirt she had owned when she was younger. She flew away, and Taylor climbed down the fire escape.

She sat down on the floor in the alley and waited. The woman was breathing, albeit softly, and Taylor couldn't think of much to do. Besides keep her warm. She summoned her swarm and covered the woman in a living blanket, staying clear of any exposed skin to avoid infection. Was it gross? Yes, but Taylor couldn't think of anything else, besides maybe weave a spider silk blanket for her, and that could take hours.

So she waited as the minutes ticked by, wishing she had a watch. _Utility belt, phone, watch, first aid kit ..._

"You know, it's kind of weird that I don't know your name," she said aloud. People walked down the sidewalk in front of her, but it was dark enough so unless she made much noise no one would notice them. "That bugs me, but I guess that's part of being a cape. I save people I don't know, and the people I save don't know me. That makes sense, I guess. The whole reason I'm going out in spider silk tights is to run away from myself but still ... I don't know. I'm supposed to have a superhero name to give you, but I don't really have a cape identity yet, so I guess ... I guess I'm doing this as Taylor Hebert."

It felt ... good, saying that. Normally facing who she was made her feel small and weak, but this time it felt ... good. "I ... I don't matter to a lot of people," she said. "Thank you for letting me help you. It means a lot."

WWW

It wasn't long before the ambulance arrived, but it felt like it. When Taylor heard the sirens, she stepped out onto the sidewalk, waving her arms. It stopped, but the paramedic gave her a guarded look before stepping out.

"Are ... you a friend of Glory Girl's?" he asked, in a tone that suggested that he wouldn't have believed it.

Taylor didn't really believe it either. "She went on ahead and left me to keep an eye on things. A woman was attacked here. She's still breathing but she's in bad shape."

She led the paramedic into the alley, noting how he stayed away from her as though she had a bad smell. She dispersed her bug blanket so the man wouldn't think that she was doing strange things to helpless women in dark alleys, and soon he was more focused on the injured woman in front of him than the strange cape next to him.

He shined a flashlight in the woman's eyes, spoke to her, and began prodding her in what Taylor assumed was a thorough and professional manner before he and another paramedic loaded her onto a stretcher.

"Is she going to be okay?" she asked.

The first paramedic gave her a look that was more than a little patronizing. "Okay? This woman is going straight to _Panacea._ She could be a severed head and Panacea would have her in perfect shape by morning."

"Oh." Panacea was Glory Girl's sister. Glory Girl was the one who got into all the newspapers, talk shows, and shampoo commercials, but last year Panacea might have saved more lives than _Eidolon_ just by visiting the hospital every day. Taylor didn't know if she could actually cure decapitation, but the woman would be fine. "This is hers, by the way," she added, handing over the purse.

"Oh. Thanks."

Why had that and that alone, out of everything she had done that night, merited an expression of gratitude? Oh well. Didn't matter. She went jogging down the street to catch up with Glory Girl.

She could have gone home at this point. Part of her wanted to slink off into the shadows, and she had done pretty much everything she had needed to. Glory Girl had found the attacker (after Taylor's bugs lined up in arrows to point her the way), and was just waiting for ... actually, what she was doing didn't really look like waiting.

She made her way into an apartment complex and climbed the stairs. Glory Girl was in the room with the broken door.

"I'm sure there's an easy way to do this," she could hear Glory Girl say, "but darn it, you skinhead numbskulls pick the hard way so often, I've forgotten what it is! So. Who wants to be the first to take a swan dive out the window?"

One of the other tenants in the complex, a shirtless middle aged man in his pajamas, stuck his head out his door to see what was going on.

"Cape business," Taylor explained, keeping her swarm buzzing around her and pooling at her feet. "Go back to bed."

Somehow that worked.

"Screw you, whore," came a voice from the room. "You haven't got the guts! Throw me out the window, and you'll catch me right before I hit the ground!"

"Happens all the time," one of the other men said. "Basic cape scare tactic."

"Well, looky here!" Glory Girl said. "A volunteer!"

Taylor stepped into the room, assuming that no one was going to try to shoot her. There were four men in the room, one of which was the attacker and the other three were ... what? Friends? There had been three people watching the whole attack, so maybe they came back here together. Between the splinters on the floor and the broken furniture, it seemed like Glory Girl had made herself at home. And had thrown a fridge at someone.

"Um," Taylor said, not sure what else to say.

Glory Girl turned, a man dangling from her grip, and flashed her a smile. "Hey, Bug Girl. Paramedics get here?"

Taylor nodded. "The cops are on their way?"

"I'm getting to that. The Empire Eighty-Eight has been going nuts since Lung went down, and I want to find out what their play is before they have the right to remain silent."

"Oh. Lung." If they were causing more trouble than normal now that Lung was out of the picture, then Taylor couldn't help but feel a twinge of guilt. "Sorry about that."

"Hm?" Glory Girl asked.

"Oh _crap_!" one of the men blurted out. "You're the one who ... with his ..."

_Oh. _She shrugged.

"What?" the first man said, marked by a scalp full of bug bites. "What are you going on about?"

"You _idiot_!" Number Two said. "How'd you tick off the bug freak! You heard about what happened to _Lung_!"

Comprehension dawned on the them, and all four men grabbed at the crotches with both hands. One of them began sobbing uncontrollably.

"What happened to ..." Glory Girl started. "I mean, yeah! So talk! Or else ... things will happen."

"I don't know crap! It's my first day!"

"Lots of money in the docks. We were told to–"

"Recruitment! Kaiser said to–"

"No, please! I need my–"

The whole point of letting Armsmaster take credit for Lung was so that she wouldn't make too big of a splash before she figured out how to swim, but it looked like the Empire Eighty-Eight had uncovered the nitty gritty details about as quickly as the Undersiders had. The Azn Bad Boys probably knew too.

Well, if the cat was out of the bag, she might as well let it scare the bad guys. Taylor didn't trust her voice to come through over all the noise, so she held up a hand to silence them. It worked. Instantly. _Weird._ She pointed at one of them. He began to talk. And talk.

Taylor didn't understand most of what he was saying. There was a lot of context she didn't know about and he used some nicknames she was unfamiliar with for capes she might not even have heard of, but she got the gist of it.

On her first night out as a cape, Taylor Hebert had created a power vacuum.

On her second night, she had started a gang war.

_Yay._

WWW

"You never did tell me your name," Glory Girl said after the police arrived. It seemed like most of the night had been spent waiting for the proper authorities.

"I haven't come up with one yet," Taylor admitted. Bug names all sounded creepy or pathetic. She was half convinced that all the capes with bug powers became rogues or villains _because_ they couldn't think of any heroic names.

"Sorry about assuming you were a villain."

"Yeah, well, I guess I kind of look like one. I never did dye my costume," she said, feeling like she had gone to school in her pajamas and fuzzy slippers. Why was Glory Girl still _walking_ with her? They were done, right? Why wasn't she flying home? "And I guess the situation did look bad from your perspective."

"I came by when I heard that there was a cape attacking random people," Glory Girl explained. "I'm guessing you just lost control of your powers or something, with you being so new at this."

That was a way out, but Taylor didn't take it. "They were complicit."

Glory Girl raised an eyebrow. "You sure? There were a lot of people who got stung, and they didn't really look the part of gangsters."

"They were _complicit,_" she said, not budging.

Glory Girl fell silent for a moment, then said, "You know what you really need right now, as a new cape just starting out?"

"To paint my costume bright and cheerful colors?" If she wore a tie-dyed rainbow suit, no one would take her seriously, but at least the heroes wouldn't attack her on sight.

"Some coffee. Come on. I know a place that's open this late."

With no more warning than that, Glory Girl picked her up like she was a child, jumped into the air, and flew her–all the way to Boardwalk.

The midnight skyline of Brockton Bay was a million dollar view–probably. Taylor was too busy keeping her eyes shut and imagining that she _wasn't_ a hundred feet up in the air to notice.

_Why is she doing this to me? Did I offend her in some way? Is this some sort of cape hazing ritual to teach me my place before I get too uppity? Is she going to put me down somewhere horrible?_

If by horrible, one meant the front entrance of Sagely Sal's, then yes, Glory Girl had flown her straight to hell. She set her down, and Taylor took a moment to find her feet as her knees stopped being jelly.

"I ... I can't drink coffee with my mask."

"We'll get it to go and have it on a rooftop." _Oh great, more heights._ Glory Girl put a hand on her shoulder and steered her into the coffee shop in a way that would have been friendly and inviting if that same hand couldn't crush coal into diamonds.

As soon as they came inside, people _noticed._ They gasped, they got out of her way, they took out their phones to take pictures. Glory Girl took this all in stride as though this had happened to her her whole life. It probably had.

"You're Glory Girl!" the cashier gasped. "Can ... I take your order?"

"I'll have a vanilla ginger latte to go," she said. She turned to Taylor. "And what are you getting?"

Just like that, all the attention in the room was turned to her. She felt like an ant under a magnifying glass. "Uh, I'll have the same!" she said, not wanting to take the time to look at the menu. Her voice sounded loud and clumsy in her own ears, and she could feel people _looking _at her, with their _eyes_!

_Oh, please someone kill me now._

"Your order will be out in a few minutes," the cashier said. Under her breath, she added, "Oh-my-gosh-it's-Glory-Girl-she's-here-she's-here!"

After that, they waited. And waited. There weren't that many people there, because honestly, what kind of sick freak got _coffee_ at twelve a.m.? But those who were there were all looking at them, wondering about them, talking about ... well, they were talking about Glory Girl exclusively.

"She is so hot! I mean, I'm not saying that I would actually cheat on you with her, but ...

"I didn't know capes came here! Think I could ask for her autograph?"

"That's ridiculous, Tom. _I'd_ cheat on you with her. Oh crap, tell me she didn't hear me say that."

"Okay, I'm going to do this! Wish me luck. Three, two ... I can't do this."

Taylor felt her pulse pounding in her ears. She felt her swarm respond to her panic, converging on her location, congregating at the windows and squeezing through the cracks, she felt–

"Two vanilla ginger lattes to go," the cashier said. "I love you–I mean, have a good night."

Glory Girl took the order without noting (or probably even noticing) the faux pas, and they left.

WWW

Victoria set the bug girl down on the roof of the Central Bank and joined her to enjoy the view. She loved the way the city lights mirrored the stars in the night sky. When she had first gotten her powers, she would go out at night and spin around so fast until the lights above her and below her blended together into one.

She stopped after she had gotten so dizzy once she crashed through a building. Her mother had kept things quiet and covered damages, but that didn't stop Amy from giving her a hard time about it.

She glanced at the new cape, and saw her sitting stiff as a board, her styrofoam cup unopened. "You okay?"

"You didn't pay for this," the kid said.

"They didn't ask me to." She had given up on paying for little things early in her career. She had a bank account full of useless money, but everywhere she went people tried to pay _her_ to wear their brands and eat out at their restaurants, if only for the celebrity endorsement.

Still, the way she said it, it kind of sounded accusatory. She used a bit of her power on the girl. Not a lot, just a bit. Subtlety was a foreign language to Victoria, but sometimes emotion manipulation worked better when the target didn't notice that her emotions were being manipulated.

If she shined too low, her power did next to nothing at all, but even when she shined brighter, she didn't always know how her power would push people. It left others in awe of her, but that meant something different for everyone she met. People who had a reason to fear her grew terrified, and others began to admire her, but even that was too simple.

People responded to fear in different ways. It would have been nice if her power just made her enemies surrender, but some people ran away when scared, others grew grew stubborn, and others got angry. Admiration was the same. Some grew shy and ran away, others became jealous and aggressive, and some people had started stalking her. Dean–Gallant–had powers that let him see people's emotions, but Victoria felt like he was groping around in the dark when she used hers.

Still, if she was going to have awesome powers and hardly ever use them, she might as well be Amy.

The bug girl finally took off her mask and sipped at her latte. Her mouth was too wide and her lips too thin to be considered objectively pretty, but if you were wearing a mask, you didn't need to be pretty, you just needed to project an air of confidence. The girl couldn't do that either. Her eyes were wide and staring at nothing, and her jaw was stiff giving her face an expression that said, _I really wish I weren't here right now._

"Hey, you're not afraid of heights, are you?"

"No," she said, too firmly for it to be true.

_Well, darn it._ Couldn't she have mentioned that, like, ten minutes ago? "If this is a problem, we can go somewhere else."

"No, I'm fine." Again, too firmly to be true, but if she didn't want Victoria to push her, then Victoria wasn't going to push her. "So, what happened with Lung? I couldn't get anything out of those Empire thugs, but they spilled their guts to you like their lives depended on it."

She looked down, flinched at the vertigo hit her, and then grabbed at the edge of the roof to steady herself.

"Here, grab onto my cape if you're feeling nervous." Victoria tossed her cape around the girl's shoulders like she always did with Amy when they hung out on rooftops. Of course, in Amy's case it was more like sharing a blanked than offering a safety cord, but either way, capes weren't just for show.

"Um, it's kind of embarrassing," she said. "I may have kind of made Lung's ... manparts fall off."

Victoria blinked. "No. You didn't. That's not ... _you_ did that?"

Amy had been called in for an emergency that morning well before sunrise. When Victoria asked her what it had been about, she had said, "Physician-patient confidentiality prevents me from telling you that Lung has been castrated. So I won't."

"I didn't mean too! It was an accident!"

Victoria considered that. "You _accidentally_ castrated one of the scariest freaks in Brockton Bay. _How_?"

She looked away. "It's kind of embarrassing."

Victoria rolled her eyes. "I promise I won't tell anyone." Besides Amy, but she told Amy everything.

"Well, I got in a fight with him, so I sent my bugs after him. That just made him angry, and he started growing armored plates over his body. So I had my bugs attack him in places he wasn't likely to be armored."

"You mean his dick." She thought of a joke about Lung's dick not being hard, but it was beneath her.

She shrugged. "That just made him angrier."

"I'll bet."

"So I stung him in the eyes and hit him with pepper spray. That made him blind, but ..."

"Even angrier."

She nodded. "Poison doesn't work well on people with enhanced healing, but Armsmaster arrived and was able to capture and tranquilize him, and I guess after that Lung's healing stopped."

"And his dick fell off." Victoria couldn't help herself. She started laughing. The fact that the bug girl had said everything in a tone of apologetic seriousness only made it funnier.

"It's not funny!"

She laughed harder. "Yes it is." She took a breath. "And now you're coming after the Empire Eighty-Eight."

She shrugged.

"If you ever catch the Kaiser, you should totally circumcise him."

She shook her head frantically. "I'm not doing that. I do _not _want a reputation as the cape who mutilates genitalia."

"It would still be hilarious."

She shook her head, but didn't say anything.

"So, new cape," she said. "Are you thinking about joining the Wards?"

She shook her head. It seemed like more of a _I don't want to join_ no than a _I haven't thought about it yet_ no.

"Why not?"

She shook her head again.

_Succinctly put._ Victoria considered using her power on her again, but while admiration was great at getting people to want to ask her for her autograph, it was a lot worse at getting people to open up. She took a shot in the dark, turned off her power entirely, and put an arm around the girl.

She stiffened at first, then relaxed. For a while, neither said anything. Victoria liked to fill the quiet with conversation, even if it meant talking about nothing at all. Amy prefered long awkward silences, and somehow managed to make them not awkward at all.

"I'm not good with people," the bug girl said at last. "I ... I don't think I'd be much good on a team."

Victoria considered that for a moment. _Okay, what's the gentlest, most diplomatic way to tell her that's bull crap?_ Sure, the kid had made a bad first impression, but apparently no one had told her that a black and grey costume with glowing yellow eyes looked creepy.

The girl was wasted as a solo operative. Maybe she couldn't take on Lung on her own, but no one in the city was stupid enough to try. Just with her ability to sense and track people, she'd be an asset to any team she was on without ever going into danger. Without a meat shield to hide behind or someone with experience to tell her what fights to avoid, she'd be dead in a week.

Really, Dean would have an easier time convincing her that Victoria would. _Actually ..._

"You know what? Why don't you try it out? Nothing permanent, just an afternoon."

She frowned. "What do you mean?"

Victoria pulled a pen out of her utility belt and wrote a seven digit number on a napkin.

"You're giving me your phone number?"

"No, I'm giving you my boyfriend's phone number, because I'm confident like that. Gallant. He's been in the Wards for longer than anyone, so he knows who does and doesn't work well on the team. Do a ride along with him, find out what the Wards program is like. If you like it, you can join the team. If you don't, then you'll know you're not missing out."

The bug girl took the napkin, looked at it, and stuck it in one of her armor compartments. "Thanks," she said, but her voice sounded grudging, if not sarcastic.

That stung a bit. _Yeah, well screw you too._ Sure, Victoria had made a few snap judgements when she had seen the kid clutching a purse while standing over the body in the alley, but Bug Girl wasn't doing herself any favors right now. Victoria wasn't even sure the Wards would want her on the team. A swarm of insects didn't have a heroic feel to them, and from what Dean had been telling her, the last thing they needed was yet _another_ edgy loner.

Still, the kid needed a team, even if she wasn't willing to admit it, and the New Wave wasn't looking for new recruits. "Worse case scenario," she said, "Gallant will be able to help you come up with a cape name that doesn't suck."

WWW

A/n And there's chapter two. I think that Taylor and Glory Girl could have become friends if they had met under the right circumstances, but those circumstances would not involve Glory Girl bullying Taylor or Taylor embarrassing Glory Girl.

Honestly, the hardest thing about writing someone with _thirty freaking arcs_ of character development is writing how they were at the beginning instead of at the end. The main reason she grew so much closer to the Undersiders in a few months than to the Chicago Wards in two years is because she was with the Undersiders during a point in her life when she most needed people, and even if she's not going to join them in this story, she's still at the same point. She's standoffish, insecure, and antisocial, while Glory Girl is arrogant, impulsive, and naive. Hopefully I was able to write them true to character without looking like I was bashing them. One of Wildbow's greatest skills as a writer is to invent likable, flawed characters, and have them meet in circumstances where they would logically hate each other.

On a side note, Worm uses the term taser for the melee version, so I'm guessing the difference between stun guns and tasers is important only to the people who sell them.

Anyway, thanks for the reviews!


	3. Chapter 3

The Other Way

Chapter Three

"_I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are the good people and the bad people," said the man. "You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides."_

Taylor sat on the bus, reading a book. She liked riding the bus as long as she wasn't going anywhere. It gave her the sensation of movement without the stress of a destination.

_He waved his thin hand toward the city and walked over to the window._

She had read this book before, but some books were different the second time around. Or _she_ was different. The first time, she had loved the part with the dragon and then skimmed through the boring philosophy at the end. This time, it was just the opposite.

"_A great rolling sea of evil," he said, almost proprietorially. "Shallower in some places, of course, but deeper, oh, so much deeper in others. But people like you put together little rafts of rules and vaguely good intentions and say, this is the opposite, this will triumph in the end. Amazing!" He slapped Vimes good-naturedly on the back._

She had gone to school that morning, dead tired from the start. Her body had been full of adrenaline and caffeine by the time she had gotten home, and that had been pushing on two in the morning. Though honestly, school was _better_ when she was barely conscious. Shorter, at least, in her head. She had slept through Mr. Gladly's class without even meaning to ... but she had woken up with glue in her hair. She couldn't begin to guess how Madison had managed that with the teacher in the room. Well, actually she could.

_Screw you, Madison,_ she thought._ Screw you too, Gladly. _She had washed out what she could in the washroom after class, and had walked straight home to take a shower after that.

"_Down there," he said, "are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any iniquity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathsomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don't say no. I'm sorry if this offends you," he added, patting the captain's shoulder, "but you fellows really need us."_

She liked her hair. She wasn't vain—she'd need something to be vain _of_ first—but her hair was the only thing that kept her from looking like a thirteen-year-old boy. She hadn't ended up having to cut anything, but she was sure that had been Madison's intent. Or maybe Taylor was giving her too much credit. Emma was the only one who was truly creative in her abuse; Madison and Sophia were just really, really persistent.

"_Yes, sir?" said Vimes quietly._

"_Oh, yes. We're the only ones who know how to make things work. You see, the only thing the good people are good at is overthrowing the bad people. And you're good at that, I'll grant you. But the trouble is that it's the only thing you're good at. One day it's the ringing of the bells and the casting down of the evil tyrant, and the next it's everyone sitting around complaining that ever since the tyrant was overthrown no one's been taking out the trash. Because the bad people know how to plan. It's part of the specification, you might say. Every evil tyrant has a plan to rule the world. The good people don't seem to have the knack."_

In a way, having powers made dealing with the bullies worse. She could kill someone if she lost control, so that meant doing _nothing._ Back down. Run away. Only two and a half years until graduation.

But as a cape, she didn't _have_ to hold back. She had made her costume as a way to escape, but during the last two nights when she had worn it, she had felt like she had finally stopped hiding.

"_Maybe. But you're wrong about the rest!" said Vimes. "It's just because people are afraid, and alone—" He paused. It sounded pretty hollow, even to him._

_He shrugged. "They're just people," he said. "They're just doing what people do. Sir."_

If she joined the Wards, she could transfer to Arcadia. From what she had heard, Arcadia was a recruiting ground for colleges instead of gangs, and everyone was gossiping about which of their classmates were secretly superheroes.

If she transferred ... would everyone make the connection to the skinny transfer student with curly hair and the skinny Wards member with bug powers? Would she have people following her around, sucking up to her, pretending to be her friend because of _what _she was instead of _who _she was? Or maybe no one would notice her beyond the passing label of being "the new kid." She'd go from being a small fish in a small pond to being a small fish in a big one. How long would it take for them to place her at the bottom of the social ladder? Then Taylor could be bullied by the children of Brockton Bay's finest, instead of by the dregs of society.

Which would be worse?

_Lord Vetinari gave him a friendly smile._

"_Of course, of course," he said. "You have to believe that, I appreciate. Otherwise you'd go quite mad. Otherwise you'd think you're standing on a feather-thin bridge over the vaults of Hell. Otherwise existence would be a dark agony and the only hope would be that there is no life after death. I quite understand."_

Taylor heard an all too familiar snigger and glanced up from her book. _Speaking of the vaults of Hell, Emma's here._ Was school out already? She had gotten on the bus at around noon, and it had made its rounds more than once, so it was probably around four. After all, good kids like Emma would _never_ skip class.

Madison was with her. Taylor guessed that Sophia was at track practice. Little mercies. She turned back to her book. They wouldn't try anything here. Well, they might. Probably would, in fact, but there were witnesses, and none of them were useless teachers.

"_Every evil tyrant has a plan to rule the world. The good people don't seem to have the knack." _No, she had already read that part. _"They're just people," he said. "They're just doing what people do." _No, she had read that too.

A dark shadow passed over her, blocking the sunlight from the window. "Oh my gosh," Emma said. "You skipped school to spend all day _reading_? Could you be more of a nerd?"

On the bus, there were fifty-seven ants, fourteen flies, twenty-seven beetles, and five weevils. Within the range of her power, there was much, _much_ more. Knowing what a swarm of bugs could do to a person, to a _cape_, should have made it easier to hold back.

It didn't.

"We're not _at_ school right now, Emma," Taylor said coldly without looking up. "Shut-up and go away before I do something you'll regret."

"Threats, Taylor?" she asked, her voice sweet and syrupy. Madison tittered. Taylor had never met someone who tittered that she hadn't wanted to throw out a window. "I thought we were friends." _From grades one through eight._ "I'm just worried that if you keep on missing school, you'll repeat a grade and _never leave._"

_The hell do you know. I've hurt people. I've watched them beg me for mercy. I teamed up with _Glory Girl. _I've _saved_ someone's _life. "Go die in a fire. Third degree burns would look great on you."

She was focused more on the four hundred and forty seven flies, wasps, bees, dragonflies, crickets, and moths that had flown in through the windows—completely on their own accord—than on the book in her hands, so Emma was able to swipe it from her grip before she could react.

"You know, it's _rude_ to read when someone's talking to you. You really should spend more time with _people._"

Emma waved the book around in her hand as if to accentuate her point, but Taylor didn't miss how close her hand came to the open window. If Taylor tried to take it back, Emma could "accidentally" drop it and blame her for jostling her. Even if Taylor did nothing, Emma could still drop it and it would cost her nothing more than a fake apology. It would cost Taylor her library card.

"Who would spend time with her?" Madison asked. "I wouldn't if you paid me."

Taylor tuned out the chattering idiot. She needed a plan. Plan A: do nothing and wait for Emma to get bored, return her book, and leave her alone. The main drawback of Plan A was that it didn't work, and never had. Plan B: grab Emma by her hair, slam her face into the floor thirty-nine times in a row, and get arrested for assault.

Tempting.

No, what Taylor really wanted was to beat her at her own game, to come up with the perfect thing to say to cut her to the core. _Like you cut me._ Emma used every secret, every invulnerability Taylor had ever shared with her to hurt her, and she could because Taylor was still nearly the same person she had been when her mother died. Emma had become a stranger.

"You know," said a voice from the other side of the aisle, "if you want someone to punch you in the face, just ask. There's no need to be coy about it." No one stood up for strangers here. This was Brockton Bay, where ignoring tremendous amounts of bull crap was an olympic sport.

But Taylor knew that voice.

She hadn't noticed her at first. Taylor hadn't been paying much attention and the girl's sunglasses had thrown her off, but she recognized the freckles, the blonde hair in a French braid.

The vulpine grin.

"Who the hell are you supposed to be?" Emma demanded. "And why don't you mind your own business?"

_Lisa._

_Tattletale._

_I'm on the bus with a super villain._

_Crap?_

Lisa's eyes were concealed by her shades, but her head turned Taylor's way just an inch, and she smiled.

_Crap._

"My business," Lisa said, "is that you're annoying and I have a headache." She had her feet up on the seat in front of her, taking up as much space as possible.

Emma adopted a look of false sympathy. "Aw, late night? Bad hangover?"

"You have no idea." While Emma was confident and aggressive, Lisa was confident and unconcerned. "I wouldn't have touched your dad sober, but he just kept buying me drinks, you know?"

For a moment Emma looked shocked, then she scowled. "That's disgusting. You've never even seen my dad." She was on the defensive. That was a bad move, which Taylor knew all too well. Of course, seeing this from the _outside_ was a novel experience for her.

"Oh, I wish. I mean, seriously, that man would just not stop talking! Not that he was really that much of a man."

Emma rolled her eyes. She had been thrown off balance by the surprise of a complete stranger confronting her, but she had found her footing. "You're making a fool of yourself. Clearly, you're thinking of one of the _other_ perverts you've been screwing around with. Honest mistake, I'm sure. After so many, they must blend together."

"What, you find it hard to believe that a _divorce_ lawyer would violate the 'sanctity of marriage?' That's basically his _job_."

Emma froze. "My ... how ..." Her eyes flickered to Taylor, but Taylor didn't know how Lisa knew about Alan Barnes any more than she knew how Lisa knew that Taylor had been in the library that Monday afternoon.

Lisa took off her sunglasses and stood up. "And I meant what I said about him not being much of a man, but you know all about that, don't you? Anything could happen to you, and he would just sit back and watch, happy that it was happening to you instead of him. Of course, hardly anything ever happens to you, Emma, but it only needs to happen _once_. Then it stays with you. For the rest—of your—life." Lisa had moved closer to her as she spoke until their faces were just inches apart. "So tell me. Do you want me to keep talking? Or do you want to find another bus?"

Emma didn't move, not because she was defiant but because she couldn't bring herself to act. Then the bus lurched to a halt, Emma stumbled backwards, and with a distant, hollow look in her eyes, she made her way to the door. Madison, nearly as confused about what had happened as Taylor was, looked at Lisa, looked at Taylor, and followed her.

Lisa went back to her seat and put her feet up again as though nothing had happened—and held Taylor's book in her lap. Taylor took a deep breath, got up, and sat down next to her. Lisa returned the book without being asked.

"Thanks."

"Given any thought about joining the club?"

Taylor hesitated. _Well, there goes that last slim hope I had of not being recognized. _"A little," she lied. "I'm still weighing my options."

"Uh-huh. Is one of those options being Glory Girl's sidekick? I mean, I get that the whole villain thing might not be your cup of tea, but really?" She shuddered.

Taylor winced. _What are your powers? Mind reading? Precognition? Clairvoyance?_ Still, it was almost a relief to be able to drop the facade. With Lisa's powers, Taylor wouldn't have been able to have kept it up long anyway. "You heard about that?"

"I follow her on Twitter. What did you think of her?"

_So you _don't_ know everything. You need to spend time on research._ She thought back to the night before, to when Glory Girl terrorized her with threats of violence and imprisonment when she thought Taylor was a villain, then dragged her all over the city when she thought she was a hero. "Honestly? I'm not sure. Her powers were messing with my mind a bit, but ... she wasn't what I expected."

Lisa nodded. "Yeah, those shampoo commercials leave out a lot. Never meet your heroes, Taylor, because heroes are people and people are trash."

_Thank you, Emma, for revealing my name to a super villain._ "I don't know about trash," she said. "Maybe just ... thoughtless?"

"Okay, that's fair," Lisa admitted. "The thing about Glory Girl is that she has everything going for her in the _worst _way. The first is her mother. Some people are great at making the law work for them, and some aren't. I'm guessing that red-haired harpy who was just here was part of the first group, am I right? She screws with you, you tell a teacher, she silences the witnesses and claims you don't have any proof, then you get punished for ..." She adopted a tone of mock horror. "... _Slandering _the good name of an innocent girl."

_It's like you've read my mind._ Taylor didn't even bother telling people about Emma's "pranks" anymore because that did worse than nothing for her. "How did you know that her dad's a lawyer?"

Lisa shrugged. "It was written on her face."

"Really?"

"She has an expressive face. Anyway, capes in the first group usually become heroes because when you're on the 'right side of the law,' the law is just another weapon for you, while capes in the second group become villains so they don't need to care about breaking it. Since Brandish, Carol Dallon, can tear people apart in the courtroom—"

"Hold on," Taylor said. "You think that _Emma Barnes_ would make a good hero? She's a manipulative sadist. I can't imagine her as any kind of hero."

"Well, can you imagine her smiling for the camera? Signing autographs? Rubbing shoulders with Brockton Bay's rich and famous?"

"Well, yeah."

"There you go."

_But there's more to being a hero than that,_ Taylor thought.

"So super lawyer mom keeps her out of legal trouble, covers up scandals, and settles things before anyone can go to the press with any of GG's embarrassing accidents. So she gets more careless, has more accidents, and eventually hurts someone. Bad. Well, someone with a gaping chest wound isn't going to want compensation, he's going to want a coffin. So Panacea comes along, puts Humpty Dumpty back together again, and even if he tries to sue, there's no medical record of any injury. Without Amy cleaning up her messes, Glory Girl wouldn't just be in trouble. She'd have a body count."

Taylor thought back to the night before, to when Glory Girl had slammed her into a brick wall under suspicion of villainy. _I can do pretty much anything I want to you and get away with it. _"Well, that's chilling."

"On top of all that, she has weaponized narcissism as a superpower, so everyone loves her, especially if they don't know her that well."

"Weaponized narcissism?"

"You know, her aura? She smiles at you and you squee about how awesome she is? You didn't notice that?"

Taylor had recognized Glory Girl's aura, but it made her feel like a worm underneath her boot more than anything else. "I just ... didn't think to call it that. You're being awfully nice for a ..."

"Villain?" She smirked. Not many people could pull off a good smirk, but she could. "I'm only evil in costume."

"You can just turn it off?"

She laughed. "Of course. That's the whole point of wearing a mask." The bus slowed to a stop in front of the downtown mall and Lisa stood up. "Well, this is me. Hey, wanna come hang out? Go shopping, have fun, get useless junk you'll never need?"

"What, with you?" Taylor realized how that could have sounded like an insult. "I mean, what do you get out of this?"

Lisa shrugged. "Would you believe me if I told you that I enjoy talking to you and that you're fun to spend time with?"

Taylor considered that. "Not really, no."

"Oh." She frowned. "Well, would you believe me if I told you that this was part of my nefarious scheme for world domination?"

Taylor considered that too. "That does sound more believable."

She grinned. "Well, you'll never know what I'm planning if you stay here."

It was a bad idea. Consorting with a super villain? Taylor was pretty sure that that was illegal, as well as stupid. If anyone found out about this ... but they wouldn't. And Lisa had stood up for Taylor in a city where no one stood up for anyone. The last person who had ever done that for her besides her dad was ... Emma.

She got up and followed Lisa out of the bus. She was going to regret this, she _knew_ she would.

Just not today.

WWW

"So she's setting you up with Gallant," Lisa said, pulling a dress off the rack. "Interesting."

Taylor wished that Lisa would keep her voice down, but Lisa seemed to think that as long as they kept their tones casual, no one would pay attention. Maybe she had a point. People were good at not paying attention.

"I haven't called him yet. I mean, it would be cool to meet him in person, but I know if I do this ride-along, he'll expect me to sign up for the team, and I don't know if I even want that."

"Uh-huh." She held the dress up in front of Taylor, frowned, and put it back. "Here's some general advice. Just because a guy takes you out to dinner, it doesn't mean that you have to take him to bed."

"That doesn't seem very general."

"You know what I mean."

"I do?" That was reassuring.

She nodded. "You have a comfort zone. That would be great if you _liked_ your comfort zone, but you don't."

"I don't?"

"Do you?"

Taylor sighed. "No."

"Exactly. It's the fifth circle of hell. So get out of it. Get a new hobby, meet new people, go to a party and wake up the next morning next to two mimes and a plastic surgeon."

"What?"

"Every mistake becomes a funny story if you wait long enough."

"So you're saying that I _should _call him, but I _shouldn't _join his team." Talking to Lisa helped her empathize with yo-yos.

Lisa handed her a pair of jeans and a top. "I think you should join _a _team. I'd prefer mine because you're awesome and we'd love to have you. Heck, if you wanted to, we could just hire you as a mercenary on the rare occasion we're doing something legal, like holding against other gangs. Basically, we'd be paying you to let us help you clean up the streets. You could not ask for a better deal than that."

Taylor hesitated. "I don't know."

Lisa rolled her eyes and pushed her into a changing stall. "Well, any team would do. Solo capes make small waves, and you've already made some big ones."

Taylor looked down at the bundle of clothes in her hands, horror slowly dawning on her. "Hold on, were picking out clothes for me or for you?"

"For you. I thought I mentioned that."

"You didn't."

"Whoops."

"And I didn't bring any money with me."

"Gee, if only there were a villain nearby with literally millions of dollars in offshore bank accounts."

"What?"

"Crime pays. Try them on. I want to see how they look on you."

Taylor closed the curtain and began to disrobe. "So what's wrong with going solo? Not every cape is on a team."

"No, but all the ones who matter are. Look at Shadow Stalker. She started solo, then joined the Wardes about a year ago. By herself she beat up non-powered criminals who were too weak to do anything about it, and their cape bosses never bothered with her because she wasn't much of an annoyance. Since she joined the Wards, she started going after capes whenever she wants, even when she's alone, because if her enemies decide to take her out permanently? Well, her team's going to make sure that they have a bad time."

Taylor struggled into the outfit. "And as long as I don't have a team, bad guys are more likely to try to kill me."

"Mutually assured destruction. The dead man's switch. The basis of all peaceful human interaction. You have to make sure that killing you causes more problems than leaving you alive, and for that you need a team."

"So you think I _should_ join the Wards." There were three hero teams in Brockton Bay, and Taylor was too young for the Protectorate and the New Wave didn't wear masks. Still, taking advice on become a hero from a villain felt surreal. She finished fastening the last button and looked at herself in the mirror. "Also, are you planning on taking me to a strip club later?"

"Only if you want me to. Why?"

"Because this seems like the sort of outfit one would wear to a strip club." _While working there._ It was clingy and revealing, which would have been fantastic if Taylor had something to reveal or cling to.

"Really? Let me see." Lisa stuck her head in through the curtain, but frowned in disappointment. "Okay, you've have lead a totally sheltered life."

"What?"

"We're definitely getting that, though."

"_What?"_

"Though there are quite a few strip clubs about capes in the docks. Don't go to _53 4 Me_, by the way. _Capes Uncaped_ is pretty good. All the girls are dressed up as famous capes, you know, for a few minutes. Except Narwhal. She stays in costume the whole time. I don't know if Alexandria is a dominatrix in real life, but she should be."

Taylor wasn't sure if Lisa was trying to seduce her to the dark side, or if she was trying to skip the dark side entirely. "Could we not talk about this?"

Lisa tossed a dress over the curtain. It landed on her head. "You're the one who brought it up. So, Gallant. What do you know about him?"

Taylor looked at the blue dress Lisa had given her, making sure she could be seen in public in it without getting arrested. "Well, he's dating Glory Girl. He joined the Wards about three years ago. He's a tinker. Um ..." What had Armsmaster told her about tinker specialties?

"Master, actually," Lisa said.

"What?"

"The PRT _really_ doesn't like masters, so whenever a master tries to be a hero, they fudge the details a bit so no one connects the good guys with people like Nilbog and Heartbreaker. Glory Girl's narcissism field _should_ give her a master rating, but she's a hero, so they classify her as a shaker. Gallant can throw energy blasts that make you feel whatever he wants you to, so he's basically a watered down Heartbreaker, but because he stand for truth, justice, and tacky, plastic action figures, he walks around in a second hand power suit and blames his powers on the wonders of technology."

Taylor shivered as she pulled the dress over her head. "Okay, I'm definitely not calling him."

Lisa scoffed. "Seriously? _You're_ going to buy into the 'all masters are evil' crap? _You're_ a master."

Taylor opened the curtain. "But you said he could mess with my head."

"Ooh, nice."

Taylor blinked. "What?"

"That's a good color on you. Let's see if I can get it a size smaller. Sure, he can mess with your head, but so what? Aegis can crush your head. Kid Win can shoot your head. Clockblocker can freeze you in time and touch your butt without you ever knowing. It's not a question of what they _can _do, but what they _will _do, and the answer is always what they can get away with. Gallant can't use his master power on you without hitting you with an energy blast, so he won't. The only thing you need to worry about is his thinker powers, and if you can handle me you can handle him."

"Thinker powers?"

"He can see emotions."

"Oh." The PHO message boards had let her down. Hard. "I feel like you're sending me a lot of mixed signals. You tell me that I should join them, then you give me all these reasons why I shouldn't."

Lisa put her hands on Taylor's shoulders and looked her in the eyes. "The _truth_ is a mixed signal. There is no right or wrong answer, and I can't tell you what you _should _do. I think you should know what you're getting into. I think that you are exactly the sort of person who _should_ make a good hero, but also the sort of person who doesn't. I think they care more about looking good than being good, and more about ruling the world than saving it. That's going to be hard for you to adjust to. But they'll keep you alive, and that's what matters most."

WWW

Lisa expected to feel better than she did. People were always so much worse than they pretended to be, so finding the exception to the rule should have been, well, _something._

Right?

But her powers didn't let her analyze herself as easily as she analyzed everyone around her. The Manton Effect in play perhaps, or maybe Lisa was too close to the problem.

_Medice, cura te ipsum._

Taylor, on the other hand, was an open book to her, and as they went through the different shops throughout the mall, Lisa leafed through page after page of the girl's personal tragedy.

Taylor hadn't picked out a name before she went out in costume in a town where all the other capes practiced their _autographs_ before their debut. As a rule, heroes wanted fame while villains went after fortune, but Taylor wanted neither. So what was it? Escapism? Well, there was a world of difference between escaping _to_ and escaping _from._

She was timid in the extreme when spoken to, but reckless in the face of danger. It wasn't the standard vanity that drove her to heroism, Lisa realized, or even courage or altruism. It was desperation.

Taylor's life didn't matter to herself, so she wanted to make it matter to other people.

The story was almost enough to make her cry.

Instead, Lisa smiled like she always did. She put her arm around Taylor's shoulders as they exited the mall as though they had been friends their whole lives, and Taylor was lonely enough to play along.

"Can I ask you a question?"

Lisa knew what that question was, but she went through the motions anyway. "Sure. Ask me anything."

"We've been talking about me becoming a hero this whole time, but why did you choose to become a villain?"

_Choice had nothing to do with it._ "Because I don't owe the world a thing, and I'm not going to fool myself into thinking that I do."

"Oh." Taylor couldn't argue with that, because it was at least partially true. The whole being-abducted-at-gunpoint part was just dressing. "If I do join the Wards, that will make us enemies."

Lisa laughed. "Oh sweetie, you are so naive it hurts. We'd be on opposing teams, sure, but cape politics has more rules than the Geneva Convention. Both sides are always holding back because the alternative is a tad ... nuclear. The Wards program is even more restrictive than the Protectorate, because if they get too many kids killed, they start looking less like junior super heroes and more like child soldiers. And hey, if I do get caught, I can, A, break out of jail, B, bribe the jury to find me innocent, or C, as a last resort, switch teams and join the Wards."

"You can do that?"

_No._ "Sure. Happens all the time." It was a little lie, but the world had enough hard truths already.

"You'd think they'd vet that sort of thing."

"Just the opposite. If you wreck the other team on a regular basis and then try to join up with them? They don't even look at your résumé, because they _know_ you're good at what you do."

They walked quietly down the street for a minute. "I could see you being a hero," Taylor said.

_D'aww. _Further proof that Taylor had _no freakin' idea_ what she was talking about. "Well, my home's that way. I'd invite you over, but, you know, secret lair and all, and you live that way." That would raise a lot of awkward questions with her team, such as, _"Why are you hanging out with a junior hero?"_ and, _"If you knew she was a white hat, why'd you let us meet her with our masks off?"_ Worst case scenario, Lisa might have to make something up about grooming a sleeper agent.

Who knew? Maybe if she played her cards right, that would turn out to be the case.

"How did you know where I ..." Taylor glared at her, but her heart wasn't in it. "You really enjoy that, don't you?"

"Enjoy what?"

"Being you."

_No._ She smiled. "Heck yeah I do. Hey, let me know how your date with your knight in shining armor goes. I'll keep in touch."

WWW

Taylor had gotten so used to sneaking home that she did it even when she didn't need to. Before she opened the front door, before she even reached her neighborhood, she had her bugs scout around inside. Dad was sitting in the living room watching television, but he fidgeted, glancing at the clock every few minutes.

"Taylor!" he called from the other room after she came inside. "Where have you been? You weren't here when I got home, and I was getting worried."

_I was hanging out with a super villain. _But Taylor couldn't tell him that, or that said super villain had turned out to be the nicest person she had met that week. "Library," she said, making a beeline for the stairs before Dad could come around the corner and notice the shopping bags. "Let me just drop some things off in my room, and I'll be right down."

She didn't have to keep so many secrets from him, but it was safer this way. She'd bury her big secrets under countless little ones, and after she got into the groove of cape work well enough to be able to tell Dad that everything she was doing was perfectly safe, _then_ she'd come clean about her double life. Until then, she'd keep Dad in a state of blissful ignorance as long as she could.

She emptied the contents of the bags out onto her bed and began stuffing the clothes into the deepest corners of her closet. Would she ever wear them? Probably not. They were too bright and flashy for her tastes, but Lisa had wanted to get them for her. And who knew? Maybe one day when she was feeling temporarily insane and everyone else in the city had gone blind, she might try them on.

The last thing in the bag fell out with a _tink_ as the hard plastic hit a button. A burner phone that Lisa must have slipped into her bag when she wasn't looking.

_I'll keep in touch._

She turned it on and looked up the contacts. There was one, under the name _L._

Taylor took a deep breath and held it. She needed to get rid of the phone, and probably destroy it just to be safe. Going shopping with Lisa had been a bad idea, but it had been a spur of the moment thing. _This_? This was an invitation to a premeditated, continuous relationship with a super villain. She liked Lisa, sure, but could she honestly tell herself that she _trusted_ her?

No. If she didn't get rid of the phone, Taylor knew she would regret it. And she _would _get rid of it.

Just not today.

WWW

A/n And here's chapter three. Thanks everyone for the reviews. Hopefully I can keep this interesting.

The book Taylor was reading at the beginning, if you're interested, is _Guards! Guards!_ by Terry Pratchett. It was published a few years after Earths Aleph and Bet diverged, so either it was written in both worlds like the Star Wars prequels, or it was sent over from Aleph. There are a few parallels between the two books that I really liked, like how Taylor and Vimes are both cynical heroes who turn out to be less cynical than real life, or how both Tattletale and Vetinari are both evil masterminds that turn out to be exactly what the city needs to keep things running, but I included it mostly because it was a fun book I liked.


	4. Chapter 4

The Other Way

Chapter Four

The next day at school …

Taylor had never heard a story that started out with those five words that ended well. She had certainly never lived one.

"So," Emma said, sidling up to her in the hallway. "Who's your friend?"

Emma Barnes did not sidle. Even when she was up to something horrible—especially when she was up to something horrible— she strutted. What new game was this? "I have no idea what you're talking about," Taylor said, using a tone that suggested that she was quite content with her ignorance.

"Yes you do!" Emma snapped. So that was the game, the game where Emma pretended to lose control. "The little whore from the bus yesterday. Or was she just a cheap slut?"

Taylor glanced around. Emma's favorite goons weren't around to join in. While some of the other students were watching just in case the two of them did something amusing, no one else seemed to be a part of this. _No backup. Trying to catch me off guard, maybe? _"So you're saying she was telling the truth. What's the legal definition of statutory rape again?" Taylor knew that Lisa had made that part up, but a jab was a jab.

Emma's eyes flashed with anger. Taylor had seen her look cruel, disgusted, contemptuous, and even spiteful, but she hadn't seen her angry in a long time. She almost looked human. It passed. "Good luck proving anything with just the word of a passing bus tramp, Taylor, but if you're interested in legal definitions, try looking up the word, 'slander.'"

Slander? That was rich, coming from Emma. She had spent half their freshmen year telling people that Taylor was pregnant, and the other half telling them that she had AIDS. "I don't need to prove anything." She _couldn't_ prove anything. _Some people used the law,_ she thought, _and others let the law use them._

But when she looked into Emma's eyes, she saw a glimmer of something … familiar. An ancient memory long buried. "What happened to you?" she asked, not for the first time. Emma was off her game. Something had rattled her. Something that Lisa had said? What _had_ she said? "What happened to you … _once_?"

Emma struck, carefully manicured fingernails raking across her face. That was more surprising than painful. In the past year and a half, Emma had shoved and tripped her in an "Oh, I'm sorry I didn't see you there," and "Watch where you're going," kind of way, but nothing like this. Nothing so _blatant._

Taylor rubbed her hand against her forehead. It came back red. _Proof._ She smiled.

"Easy there," came a gentle voice as Mr. Gladly made his way through the crowd. "Just calm down, both of you." He looked at Taylor, and his face went a little pale. "Yeesh. Taylor, why don't you let me take you down to the nurse's office to put something on that scratch?"

Taylor stared at him. The school had a zero tolerance policy when it came to fighting, but policy and practice were two different things in Winslow. Besides, Mr. Gladly had never been much of a disciplinarian. "Seriously? That is your response to this? Are you blind or do you just not care?"

"I care." He sounded hurt. He _looked_ hurt. Mr. Gladly put a hand on Taylor's shoulder. It felt like being consoled by a snake. "But I was young once too. I know how it is to lose your temper and say something you don't mean or …" He glanced at the blood on her forehead. Some of it dripped into her eye. "… Or do something you don't mean, and there's no need to make a bigger deal of it than it already is when it's better to just let things go and move on."

The sad thing was, he was right. No, the sad thing was that _Lisa_ was right. The rules played favorites, and that didn't include people like her.

But … how much of that was observed fact instead of her own cynicism? Did Taylor _know_ the whole school was against her, or did she just assume it was? She had never believed much in the system, but could she take a leap of faith, if only to prove it wrong?

"No," she said. "Emma meant everything she did. I don't have to tell you what that was, because you saw everything. If you refuse to enforce the rules, don't expect anyone to respect them or you."

Mr. Gladly looked shocked and a little worried. Taylor had forced him into the role of authoritarian, and he didn't like it. Well, Taylor didn't like him much either. Emma looked shocked too, but more at what she had done than what Taylor was doing, and she didn't look worried at all. Well, if the system worked then Emma wouldn't be a problem anymore, and if the system didn't work then Taylor wouldn't be here for very much longer.

"Okay," Mr. Gladly said with a sigh. "Okay, if that's what you really want. Come with me." He led the two of them down to the principal's office.

The principle was tall, thin, and she wore her dirty blond hair in a bowl cut that didn't look good on anyone. Taylor was tempted to like her, if only because she was the polar opposite of Mr. Gladly. Mr. Gladly wanted to be liked, but Principal Blackwell seemed to think that a principal that was liked was a principal that wasn't doing her job. Taylor was inclined to agree. She looked up from her desk straight at Taylor's bloody face. "Mr. Gladly? Explain."

"Oh, Mr. Gladly was my dad's name. Call me Mr. G."

Principal Blackwell gave him a patient look that suggested that patience was a rare virtue that should be appreciated while it lasted.

Mr. Gladly cleared his throat. "This is Emma Barnes and Taylor Herbert. They were fighting."

_They?_

"She started it!" Emma protested. "I don't want to come off as immature, principal, but I just finished it."

"Like hell you did!" Taylor snapped.

"It doesn't matter who started it," the principal said. "I do not permit fighting in this school. This is …" She typed a few words into her computer. "I believe this is the first offense for both of you, yes?"

"No," Taylor said. "That might be officially true for her, but I've never been in a fight with anyone at school, including today. She attacked me, so this wasn't even a fight, it was an _assault_. The blood that's on _my_ face and not hers is proof of that."

"Just because you're bad at fighting doesn't mean that you didn't fight," Emma said. "And just because I don't bruise easily doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt." She turned to the principal. "Ask anyone who was there if you want _real_ proof; they'll back me up."

They probably would, but that proved nothing but Lisa's point. The system favored those who had friends willing to lie for them. Taylor didn't even have strangers willing to tell the truth for her.

The principal looked at Mr. Gladly. "You were there. What happened?"

Mr. Gladly shuffled his feet nervously. "I, well, I only saw the end of it, so I can't say."

Taylor rolled her eyes. _Typical spineless Gladly._ Of course he wouldn't stand up to anyone or for anyone; no one would be friends with him if he got them in trouble. It was understandably sad when students lost focus of everything else but high school popularity contests, but when a teacher did it, it was just pathetic. And Taylor was pretty sure none of the students he sucked up to were even his friends. The losers and the loners like Taylor hated him. Did the popular kids like Emma like him, or did they just see him as useful?

"But I have Emma and Taylor in my class," he continued, and despite herself Taylor's ears perked up. Was he actually going to _do_ something for once? Just two days ago he had told her that he knew she was being bullied and had offered to help, and while she had turned him down at the time … "And I can't imagine either of them attacking someone unprovoked."

Oh. _Oh._ That was a betrayal so gentle and gutless it might as well be called the Gladly Maneuver. Amusingly, he had a point. Emma might emotionally abuse someone unprovoked, but physically hitting them was strange for her. Taylor hadn't been unprovoked since she started high school.

"Alright then," the principal said. "As I was saying, this is the first offense for both of you, so you're both getting two days suspension."

"Two days?" Emma protested. "You're punishing me for defending myself? What am I supposed to do, lie back and let people like her have their way with me and hope that a teacher just happens to wander by in time to put a stop to it?"

Her hypocrisy would have been impressive if it weren't so nauseating. Taylor ignored her and focused on the principal. She studied the tired, annoyed expression on her face, and something snapped. "I remember," Taylor said coldly, "you made a promise to my dad and me back in January. You said that you'd keep an eye out, that you'd make sure I'd be safe here." _No one looks out for me but me._ She laughed. "My dad thought you meant something, but I knew from the start that you were full of crap."

Mr. Gladly gasped behind her and the principal scowled. _Right. Hurt someone in school, and she gets annoyed. Send someone to the hospital, and she get worried that someone might sue. But insult her to her face? Oh boy, you crossed a line there._ Next to her, Emma's eyes twinkled like Taylor was playing right into her hands. Maybe she was. Or maybe Taylor was done playing.

"You are not doing yourself any favors, young lady," the principal said. "That sort of disrespect will—"

"Disrespect?" Taylor repeated. "What have you ever done to merit anything else?" _It's not about justice. Just order._ She stood up. "I knew from the start that coming to you, or him, or anyone in this damn school for help would be a farce, but I just _had_ to see the circus for myself. _Thank you_, Principal Blackwell, for putting on the best damn show in Winslow High."

She pushed the door open to leave. She didn't need anyone here. She never did. "I'm done here."

WWW

"And that's how I got two days off from school."

"Yikes," Lisa said through the phone. "Makes me glad I dropped out."

"I wish I could drop out," Taylor said, lying on her bed and staring at the ceiling. The cut on her forehead wasn't very deep, so she had washed it after getting home and put some gauze on it. "But if I back down, they win. And they know that." Of course, if the Wards thing worked out, she could transfer to Arcadia, which might suck less. She couldn't imagine it sucking more.

"Well, do they win if you give them lice? Or scabies? Crabs, tapeworms, termites, ticks, mosquitos?"

"They'd get a moral victory, I suppose."

"Okay, but what if we kidnapped them—"

"Yeah, I'm not doing that."

"Drove them to the outskirts of town—"

"Lisa, I'm a hero."

"Dressed them up as mimes—"

"So we could what? Hunt them for sport?"

Lisa fell silent for a moment. "You know? That's a really good idea. Way better than what I had in mind. You _sure_ you don't want to be an Undersider?"

Taylor smiled. She didn't, but the fact that _someone_ wantedher felt nice, even if it that someone was a villain. "Yeah, I'm sure. I think I'm going to call Gallant, see if I can tag along with him tomorrow."

"See if you can set a time for Friday."

"Friday?" Taylor shook her head, despite the fact that Lisa couldn't see her over the phone. "I'm sure the cyber-punk knight in shining armor has something he'd rather be doing on the weekend than hang out with me."

"Which is why you should do it. It's a basic head game, Taylor. If you come begging, he'll take you for granted, but if you make him work to recruit you, he'll convince himself you're worth the trouble."

"Does that … actually work?"

Lisa laughed. "I do it all the time, and I've never once had a guy turn me down."

Taylor rolled her eyes. "Yeah, well, you're prettier than I am."

"Hmm, not really. I just do a good job of _convincing_ people that I am."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"Meh, head games. Everything's a head game. Anyway, I gotta go. I'm robbing a museum later this week and still need to iron out the kinks."

Taylor winced. "Please don't tell me about your dastardly deeds. It makes me feel complicit."

"I'm joking, I'm joking. It's actually a bank."

"Lisa!"

She laughed. "Okay, okay. Let me know how your date goes."

"It's not a date. He's already in a relationship with the girl who gave me his number."

"Sounds like _someone's_ trying to spice things up in the bedroom."

"Yeah, I'm hanging up now. Goodbye."

WWW

Taylor didn't want to introduce herself to Gallant as a juvenile delinquent, so she spent the next few hours in the basement until school would have been over. She worked on her art project, which might have been a lost cause by this point, and had her spiders spin a few lengths of silk for her. She imagined that she could use the silk to tie up bad guys after she caught them. Sure, zip ties were about twenty for a buck, but, well, she had a theme.

She also sort of, kind of, maybe if you looked at it the wrong way, internet stalked Gallant. _Research_. It was research. She had already embarrassed herself when she had run into Glory Girl unprepared, so she needed to make sure she didn't make the same mistakes with him.

The PHO message boards and wiki were, according to Lisa, false when it came to his powers, but they still had a lot of information about Gallant's history in the Wards. He had joined the team about three years ago, making him the most experienced member, and was the third oldest after Aegis and Clockblocker. He was a strong supporter of the community outreach program, which in Taylor's experience meant that capes visited different schools and told students not to do drugs.

She wondered if that was compulsory. If she joined the team, she could handle going on patrols and fighting bad guys, but public speaking? No. If the Wards wanted good public relations, then they needed to keep her as far away from a microphone as possible.

At a quarter before four, she took out the scrap of paper that had his number on it and dialed.

It rang.

She hung up.

This was a bad idea. She couldn't just _call_ him right when he was getting out of school. Let him go home first, and relax for a little bit! Then, maybe around five … no, then he might be eating dinner. No one wanted a phone call during dinner time. Better to wait around eight or nine … unless he was on patrol. When did patrols start for the Wards? When did they end? She didn't want to distract him during a crucial moment, so it would be best to wait until …

Her phone rang.

She stared at it.

_He's calling me back! What do I do?_ Ignore it. That was the only option. Pretend it was a wrong number or something.

She answered it.

"H-hello?"

"Hello, I just got a call from this number and I'm calling you back."

His voice sounded confident, strong, and relaxed. "Oh! Um," she said, feeling like the exact opposite. "Is this Gallant?" She wondered suddenly if this was an elaborate prank where Glory Girl would give her a random number and let her think she was talking to a hero.

"Yes this is," he said. "Who am I speaking to?

Her mind went blank. "I … don't know." _Crap!_ "I-I mean, um, I haven't figured that out yet." _Great, now I sound like an amnesiac._ "I'm new at this, and I haven't gotten that far, and I'm new at this—I'm a cape!" She took a deep breath. She should have written this down first. She was great at writing—compared to talking, at least.

"Oh, you're a new cape? That's great! And don't stress out about the name. It's not nearly as big of a deal as people think. Can I ask how you got my phone number?"

"Uh, it's a long story."

"Was it Vicky?"

Vicky. Victoria Dallon. Glory Girl. "Yes?"

"Ah! Perfect. Do you mind if I ask you what your powers are? I don't mean to pry."

"I do bugs." That sounded weird. And dumb. Taylor could not have sounded more retarded if she tried.

"Bugs! Right. Vicky told me so many wonderful things about you. I was wondering when you were going to call."

Taylor tried to come to terms with the idea of Glory Girl saying something good about her, which was far easier than imagining her doing it more than once. "Sorry. I guess I should have called you sooner."

"Oh, no worries. So, what can I do for you?"

Taylor bit her lip. She knew everything about what she wanted _except_ how to put it into words. "It's complicated. See, I um … I um …"

"You wanted to see what the Wards program was like without committing to it?"

Okay, so maybe it wasn't that complicated. "Glory Girl said you could do me. Do something for me!" _Oh please tell me I didn't say that! _Well, if it was any consolation, she hadn't given him her name yet so she wouldn't have to change it.

"Sure, no problem. Anything for a new cape. If you have any questions about the Wards program, I'd love to answer them for you. Or, if you prefer, I could take you with me the next time I go on patrol and you can see for yourself what it's like."

"Okay." That wasn't a yes or no question. "The second one."

"Really? That's great!" He sounded excited for some reason. Well, maybe that was just him being polite. "What time would you like to meet?"

Taylor thought back to Lisa's advice. "Friday? I mean, if you're not too busy."

WWW

Taylor had always been a cape geek, even before she got her powers, but she had never gotten into the hero worship that pried into every aspect of their lives. Their abilities interested her, but the people behind the masks did not.

She spent the next two days watching every Youtube clip and talk show that had Gallant in it, but that was just because without school sucking up seven hours of her day, she had time in abundance.

No one from school had told her dad that she was suspended, so he still didn't know. Taylor suspected that Emma had used the "My daddy's a lawyer" card and had convinced the principle to cancel the punishment. The principle couldn't punish Taylor for fighting without punishing Emma, but between the classic combination of incompetence and negligence that Winslow High was famous for, no one had bothered to tell Taylor to come back to school.

Oh well. Part of her had already decided to join the Wards, transfer to Arcadia, and leave Winslow to burn in hell, so she couldn't bring herself to care. _Good riddance to bad rubbish._

She went to the abandoned ferry to meet Gallant, and changed into her costume in the station bathroom. The trashcan had nothing but a few paper towels inside, so she figured it would be a safe place to stash her backpack with her civilian clothes. She didn't carry any ID on her so it wouldn't be a big deal if it ended up stolen, but she filled it with spiders too just for the heck of it.

After she was ready, she took a deep breath and stepped outside into the afternoon sun to spend the day with a super hero.

"Well, look at you!" he said as soon as he saw her. "Nice costume. What's it made out of?"

Taylor found herself blushing and glad that her mask hid her face. Then she remembered that Gallant could see emotions, so the mask wasn't doing anything for her. "Black widow spider silk," she said.

Gallant nodded slowly. "That," he said, "is hard core. Why black widow?"

She knew he wasn't really impressed with her costume. He was wearing _power armor_ that protected him better and gave him enhanced strength. Still, she had put a lot of work into it, so having someone at least pretend to like it was a nice feeling for her. "Their silk is nearly as strong as steel."

"Really? And does it just weigh as much as regular silk?"

"About."

He nodded again. "Just to warn you? If you do decide to join the team, everyone's going to want you to make them one, if only to wear under their costumes. But I am getting ahead of myself." He snapped his fingers. "I need something to call you until you come up with a cape name. Would you mind if I called you Silk for the next hour or so?"

Silk? That sounded … seductive and elegant, the sort of name a femme fatale cape would call herself if she had lots of make-up, a coquettish hair style, a costume she filled out, and a voice that sounded like sex. It didn't suit her at all, but … an hour? "Okay."

"Okay! Come on, I'll take you for a drive." He opened the car door for her like a gentleman from a different century. It made her feel weird. Kind of squiggly.

But oh, what a car it was. Taylor had never cared much about cars; they got her from one point to another as fast as possible. If she wanted to enjoy the trip, she got out and went for a run. But this? It was some sort of luxury sports car that probably cost more than her house. No, cross that, it _definitely_ cost more than her house. The silver-grey exterior matched Gallant's power armor, and as soon as he started the engine, her seat started massaging her back—which she would have appreciated more if her armor weren't in the way.

"So, how does this work?" she asked. "This patrol thing?"

"There are a few people I would like to touch base with," he said. "If you save someone, you can't just disappear into the void and assume they'll be okay. It's best to now and then to make sure they're not targeted again and see if they need anything else. In fact, Vicky mentioned that you helped a woman named Andrea Young a few nights back when she had been attacked by an Empire thug. If you like, we could drop by her apartment. I'm sure she'd like to thank you in person."

Would she? "That's okay. I … I didn't really do much. If I hadn't shown up, Glory Girl would have handled it." If Taylor hadn't been in the way, she probably would have done it faster.

"If you say so," Gallant said, but he sounded doubtful. "There are a few ongoing investigations around here that we can look into. I'd be the first to admit that I'm not much of a detective, but some people tell things to capes that they won't tell cops. Other than that, a patrol is about being visible so if someone has a cat stuck in a tree they can wave me down."

That would explain the open windows. People saw them drive past, and while they didn't recognize Taylor, the smiled when they saw Gallant. "How good at you are climbing trees?"

"In power armor? Terrible, but I have pretty good aim if I need to toss you up into one."

She laughed, despite herself.

"So go ahead. Ask me anything."

"Anything?"

"Anything. Anything at all. Cape stuff, Wards stuff, anything."

Well, there was really only one question that mattered, but not one she could ask. "How do your parents feel about you being a cape?"

"My father tolerates it. He views it as an exuberant hobby that I will put away when I grow up and start worrying about more important things. He's okay with me being in the Wards, but if I told him I wanted to join the Protectorate full time after I turn eighteen, he might get upset."

Gallant didn't mention his mother. Was she not in the picture? Did his parents get a divorce, or was his mother dead like hers? "More important things?" she asked instead. "Like what?"

"The family business. He's a bit on the wealthy side, and he thinks that I can do more good by helping out with the company than putting on a suit and fighting crime. I can see his reasoning, of course. My power set isn't that great, money can solve a lot of problems. After a super villain blows up a neighborhood, we need to put the fires out. After someone gets hurt, hospitals need to be funded. When a villain is arrested, prisons need to be maintained. If an Endbringer attacks, refugees need to be housed and fed and cities need to be rebuilt. All that costs money."

"But you don't agree with him?"

He shook his head. "No. If money could solve all out problems, we wouldn't have either."

"Then what does?"

"Every problem has its own solution," he said. "But what people need most right now, more than money? They need something to believe in."

Taylor smiled at that behind her mask. He could not have come up with a cornier answer if he tried, and he managed to sound completely serious at the same time. "You want to fight super villains with hope?"

"Have you ever tried fighting one without it? And it's not hope, it's … something more than that. Something I can't put into words, but if you stick around long enough, I might be able to show you."

"Ooh, intriguing. Maybe I'll take you up on that."

"So how about you, Silk? How do your parents feel about you going out in costume?"

She winced inwardly. "They, um, don't. I haven't told my dad I have powers yet." She had brought up with her mom the last time she visited her grave, though, so that was something. "He worries a lot, and he wouldn't be able to help me much when I'm in costume, but this is also something I don't think I could _not_ do, so … I don't know. If I joined the Wards, I guess I would have to tell him, wouldn't I?"

"I would encourage you to do so," he said. "But not every home environment lends itself to full transparency. Vista hasn't come out to her parents yet, and she's been on the team for over two years now. There's a loophole where you can ask someone in the PRT or the Protectorate to sign in place of your legal guardian, but that should be a last resort, not a first."

Taylor nodded. It beat giving her dad a panic attack every time she went out in costume. What else did she want to know? "What are the other Wards like? As people?"

"As succinctly as possible? They are people who are trying their best to be their best. Aegis leads the Wards, and he would take a bullet for anyone on the team."

"Isn't he bullet proof?"

He waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. "He'd do the same even if he didn't have powers. He feels pain just like anyone else, and no invulnerability is flawless. He's still on the front line, every time. Then there's Clockblocker." He let out a chuckle. "That guy is fearless, I really mean it. Plenty of capes will volunteer when an Endbringer attacks, but will fold in a heartbeat the moment a PRT bureaucrat in a suit scowls at them. Clockblocker breaks every rule he can get away with breaking, and bends every one he can't."

"Are there a lot of rules?"

He nodded. "Most of them are to help the organization run smoothly and safely, but there are still plenty that focus on the message we want our image to deliver. His attitude might get him in trouble—well, it _does_ get him in trouble, but a message sounds more genuine when everyone isn't speaking in unison. After him, there's …"

"You," Taylor supplied.

"Me, but you've already met me, and I won't bore you by talking about myself. After me there's Shadow Stalker, and I can't think of anyone more driven than she is. Though just as a warning before you meet her, she does have a lot of personal issues that she hasn't managed to leave behind when she puts on the costume. Don't tell her I said this, but she doesn't come from the best home environment, and while that helps her focus while on the job, it's best to give her some space. Still, she's a great asset to the team, and while she'll never admit it, she needs the team more than anyone."

Taylor nodded slowly. Knowing that capes had personal issues was like knowing that teachers had families to go home to after class. It was obvious once she thought about it—after all, spandex and super powers hadn't made _her_ life all sunshine and roses—but it was never something she would have considered.

"Browbeat is new," Gallant continued. "He got in his first real cape fight yesterday, and he wasn't too thrilled with how it went, but if he sticks with it for a few more months, I feel like he's going to make a great difference."

"What happened yesterday?"

"A gang robbed a bank. Small time, but it looks like they're trying to make a bigger name for themselves. They call themselves the Undersiders."

Taylor's breath caught in her throat. "O-oh. Did anyone get hurt?" She struggled to keep her voice calm, but that wouldn't make any difference against someone who could sense emotions. Wait, Lisa had told her that he could _see _emotions, so as long as his eyes were on the road, then …

"No, thank goodness. Any time there's a fight with another cape, the first priority is always keeping everyone safe. The fact that we were able to engage them before they escaped is a bonus, because usually they're gone before the alarm goes off."

Why would Lisa tell her to go out with an empath the day after her team robbed a bank? Why had Lisa _told_ her that they were going to rob a bank? "So what's Kid Win like?"

"He is the opposite of Shadow Stalker in every way imaginable. If either of them worked solo that would be a problem, but on the team they balance each other out. While Shadow Stalker can be focused to the point of being harmful, Kid Win is relaxed, easily distracted, and doesn't let anything get to him. He hasn't figured out his specialty yet, but even without it he can build nearly anything."

"And that leaves Vista." She was glad to have changed the subject, but had Gallant noticed anything? Was he biding his time to jump her with an interrogation as soon as she let her guard down, or was he waiting for her to come clean on her own? Not that there was a whole lot to come clean about. Taylor hadn't done anything illegal. Had she?

"And that leaves Vista," he repeated. "She's been on the team the longest after me, and is the most reliable person on the team. It's more of a family than a team for her, because, well, I told you how attentive her own family is. So that's the team in sound bites. You'll get a better idea of who they are when you meet them."

_Not if_, she thought. _When._ Well, she was leaning that way. The way he described them, they didn't just sound like likable people, but like _people._

"So I answered your questions," Gallant said. "Now I have some for you."

Taylor inhaled sharply, knowing what was going to happen next. The door was unlocked and they weren't driving very fast, so …

"How do you feel," he said, "about the name 'Ladybug?'"

WWW

They made a few stops along the way. At one point, Gallant pulled over to break up a fight between some Empire thugs and a few ABB members. Well, maybe "fight" was too strong a word. Some kids Taylor's age (and a few she recognized from school) were yelling and posturing at each other, and Gallant deescalated the situation while Taylor waited in the car. It ended with a few of the gang members getting their pictures taken with him and then going their separate ways.

Taylor and Gallant spent most of the time coming up with a good name for her. Silk was too sexy, Ladybug was too silly, and Hive Queen and Swarm were too sinister.

"Firefly?" he suggested. "That show was the best thing to come out of Earth Aleph in a while, and here on Bet it's not copyrighted."

She shrugged. "I haven't really used any fireflies yet." If she went on a trip to import them from the countryside, she could use them for, like, Morse code or something, but they weren't city bugs. "I mean, it's better than Spoder, so ..."

"Sp0der," Gallant corrected. "Spelled with a zero. The zero is important."

"But it's pronounced the … right."

"How about, oh, what was it called? I remember there was a mythological beetle that rolled the sun across the sky. I want to say, 'Kerrigan,' but that's something else. I knew I should have made a list."

Taylor shook her head. "I can't name myself after some ancient sun god. That's beyond pretentious."

"You think you couldn't pull off pretentious if you had to?"

"I'm more skittish than pretentious," she admitted.

"How about Skitter then?"

"That's not what that word means."

"Yes, but bugs skitter around, don't they? But you're right, it's the wrong image."

"I still don't know what the 'right image' is."

"You want to have a name that would encourage people to come to you for help instead of run away. Intimidating the villains is good, but other capes will have a professional interest in you while most civilians will know nothing about you beyond your name and costume."

"Okay."

"How about Myriad?"

Taylor frowned. "I don't see the connection."

"Sure. You control a _myriad_ of bugs, don't you?"

"That's a bit of a stretch."

"How many can you control?"

She shrugged. "I haven't found an upper limit, so as many as I can fit into my range."

"And what's your range?"

"A few blocks." That would have been a lot more impressive if Taylor could control something besides, you know, bugs.

"And how many different species of bugs out there?"

"Millions," she admitted. "But … Myriad? I don't know, it sounds a bit too pretty."

"What, you think you can't do pretty?"

No, but that was the advantage of wearing a mask. She shrugged.

"Well, try it out for a bit, let it grow on you. Unless you liked one of the other ones better?"

She didn't, and she supposed that if she stuck with the name, she could paint some sort of kaleidoscope design into her costume. Something iridescent, maybe. "Okay, but I reserve the right to change it later."

"Sure thing, Myriad."

"Okay, I'm liking it less already."

He laughed good-naturedly as he pulled up in front of a house in the suburbs.

"Where are we?"

"This is a follow-up," he explained. "There was a kidnapping yesterday, and I'd like to check on the parents."

Taylor nodded. "Do you want me to wait in the car?"

"Not if you'd like to come inside."

She got out of the car and followed Gallant to the front door. Being in costume, she decided, was easy, but being in costume in public? That was something that she would never get used to.

Gallant rang the doorbell, and a middle-aged man answered the door. He looked haggard, like he hadn't been sleeping well.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Alcott," Gallant said. "I wanted to check to see how you were doing. May we come in?"

WWW

"There haven't been any ransom notes, negotiations, demands, or anything," Alcott said in a shaky voice. "I don't know if they're trying to make me sweat or if they just did it for _kicks_."

"Can you think of any other reason why someone would want to kidnap Dinah?"

He shook his head. "Money? Extortion? My brother-in-law's the mayor so it might be trying to get to him, but Triumph has been watching over things over there, and he hasn't heard anything yet."

Neither of them paid much attention to Taylor. Gallant offered a brief introduction on her behalf, and then she was left alone to watch. A picture on the wall caught her eye, a family photograph. She recognized Alcott despite the tired, rung-out look he had in real life, and that would make the woman his wife and the preadolescent girl with long brown hair the missing Dinah.

None of them looked happy in the photograph, their smiles forced and faked, but all family pictures were like that. No matter how much you loved life, no matter how much you loved each other, you had to squeeze out something picture-perfect for three seconds straight, and that always made you come out looking dead inside.

"Is there anything else you can think of?" Gallant said. His voice was gentle, more like a therapist's than an interrogator's. "It's fine if it seems improbable or even ridiculous; every lead helps in a matter like this."

No matter how good Alcott's poker face was, Gallant's power would let him see what the man was feeling. At least, Taylor assumed it would. She had no idea how his powers worked, or even if Lisa had been right about him in the first place.

Alcott stared out the window for a long moment, his finger drumming against the table. "Improbable," he repeated, mostly to himself. "My mother always had an appreciation for literature, she had _taste_, but I've never had the time to pick up the original Sherlock Holmes stories. I've only heard the quote in references and renditions. How did it go? Eliminate the impossible, something something the truth?"

"Once you eliminate the impossible," Taylor said, speaking for the first time since entering the house, "whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."

Alcott nodded bitterly. "I remember the actors playing Sherlock or some Sherlock wannabe always looked so _smug_, like they had it all figured out. But the impossible went out for a drink over thirty years ago and hasn't been back since. You can't be sure of anything these days, not even death and taxes. The weatherman could predict sunshine only for Leviathan to climb up out of the beach and make it rain. My brother-in-law's worried about his reelection, but there's no guarantee that they'll be a Brockton Bay to be mayor _of_ in a few months.

"But how do you tell a kid that? You can't, so you lie to them and tell them that everything is fine. Keep truth and other sharp objects out of reach so they don't hurt themselves. Even if things don't work out, you have to pretend they do because staying up all night worrying only makes things worse. So we told her that everything was fine, even when it wasn't, and that things would get better, even when they wouldn't. You'll make friends at school, your uncle will get reelected, grandma will get out of the hospital, we'll all live happily ever after." He laughed. "It was a charade, of course. Most of parenting is, and we thought we were good parents for raising a kid who could still _believe_ in things like futures.

"But then Dinah started worrying. That's part of growing up, worrying, being afraid, asking questions. I think my mother's death hit her harder than it hit me, because Dinah always assumed that she'd be released from the hospital, just not in a casket.

"Then she started getting headaches so bad we could barely get her out of bed. She missed so much school we were worried that she was going to have to repeat a year, which now … which now seems like such a small thing to worry about, but at the time … She started talking funny too, making predictions that there was a sixty-seven point two two seven four chance that we'd stop for ice cream on the way back from the hospital. The doctor was no help. Told us to just have her chug aspirin until the headache went away. We even took her to the PRT to get her tested to see if she had a trigger event or something because every parent _hopes_ that their children are special—until they are—but the MRI came back negative. We were looking into therapy to see if maybe that could help cope with the problem even if we couldn't cure it, but then, well …" He waved his hand and trailed off.

"You think that her headaches had something to do with it?" Gallant asked.

He shook his head. "No. I don't know. It's just that … if you get in a fight with someone right before they die, it stays with you. Even if it wouldn't have changed anything, you spend the rest of your life wishing that you had done something different. I'm a realist. I know that I might not ever …" He swallowed. "But I keep on thinking that the last time she was home, she was in pain and there was _nothing_ I could do!" He let out a breath. "There's _still_ nothing I can do. I wasn't even here, you know? I was at work, doing my damn _job._" He laughed bitterly. "Anna was here at the time, for all the good that did. They just threw her to the ground and walked past her. I know that I could have done more if I had only _been_ there, but I also know that I didn't do anything at all!"

"You did everything you could," Gallant said. "That's not a comforting thought, I know, but it's the truth. You were gone, your daughter was sick, and your wife was alone, but not anymore. Now you have the police, you have the Protectorate, and you certainly have the Wards looking for your daughter. She even made the front-page news this morning, so everyone in Brockton Bay will know what she looks like and that she needs help."

"No offense, but the police, the Protectorate, and the Wards didn't do much when my daughter was being kidnapped in the first place."

"And I apologize for that," Gallant said. "The Protectorate was out of town that afternoon, and the Wards were involved with a gang of bank robbery, leaving the already overburdened and understaffed police force. The men who took your daughter may have been lucky, but being lucky will only help you commit the crime. To get away with it, you need to be careful for the rest of your life."

"Do you really think you'll find her?"

Gallant nodded. "I know we will. I don't know when, but I promise you we will find her. Until then, is there anything we can do for you, Mr. Alcott?"

Alcott let out a sigh and seemed to relax into his exhaustion instead of trying to stave it off. "No, no. Thank you for stopping by. I'll let you or Triumph know if I remember anything that might be helpful."

As they left, Taylor took with her the swarm that came with her on the way in as well as all the ants, cockroaches, flies, beetles, spiders, termites, and centipedes already in the house. It was the least she could do, and also the most.

"What does a team of junior super heroes do to solve a kidnapping?" Taylor asked after they got back into the car.

"All we can," Gallant said as he started the engine. "But if I have to be honest, that's not a whole lot. We're combat-oriented, so if we find out where she is we can rescue her, but the rescue operation is the easy part. If we had a thinker on the team who could search large areas of the city at once, see the future, or analyze patterns and clues with superhuman efficacy, we'd have a chance, but most non-combat thinkers join the PRT think-tank instead of one of the hero teams."

"Then you can ask them to help out, can't you?"

"We could, but the Parahuman Response Team only responds to parahuman threats, and there's no evidence of any parahumans being involved."

_I could search large areas of the city at once,_ Taylor thought. _If my bugs could see worth a crap. _"So what can you do?"

"The same thing we've been doing. Whoever kidnapped her is connected to at least one of the city gangs, and if we apply enough pressure to them, something will turn up. If the kidnapper tries to use the child for ransom or extortion, then that will point us in the right direction. Other than that, the non-powered police force is actually better equipped and trained for this sort of case than we are."

Taylor stared at him. "So, everything you said back there about finding her and getting her back? Was that just a comforting lie?"

"Is that how you see it?"

"Well, yeah. You don't think you're going to find her, and you're not even going to do anything different to try to find her, but you want him to think you will while you pass the buck to someone else." Lisa's words came back to her. _They care more about looking good than being good, and more about ruling the world than saving it._

"I want him to have hope."

"Even if it's a false hope?"

He didn't answer for a moment, and Taylor realized that she had crossed a line. His expression was hidden behind his helmet, but she knew that any second he was going to stop the car and tell her to get out.

He didn't.

"If you're willing, I'd like you to take a moment and consider the alternative. If what I told him was a comforting lie, what should I have said? What is the probability that Mr. Alcott will see his daughter again? That, I can tell you, is about fifty percent. In a best case situation, Dinah is being held for ransom and she'll be back home by the end of the week after her parents transfer the money. If she's being held for blackmail, then she'll be safe and healthy for as long as her uncle remains mayor. After that, she'll be a loose end. If she's not in either situation, then her fate is likely worse.

"Even if she does escape, it will take months or even years for her captors to let their guard down, and even then she might never recover fully. If you like, we can examine the hard truths on a larger scale, such as how the villains outnumber the heroes in Brockton Bay by nearly two to one, or how the Endbringers are predicted to wipe us out somewhere between five and fifty years, but that would be getting sidetracked. If I offer false hope, then it's because it's the best I can."

Taylor looked away, feeling guilty. "Sorry."

"Don't be. I respect your integrity, Myriad, and I wish more than anything that the truth was something that could comfort people instead of frighten them, but that's not always the case."

"Is this what you were talking about earlier? About how people needed something to believe in?" _Are heroes worth believing in? Or do we just tell people what they want to hear?_

"Not quite. That is still more like hope. I …" His voice trailed off as he looked at a boy walking down the sidewalk, and he slowed his car down to a stop. Gallant had been doing this sort of thing all day long. He hadn't explained his methods, but Taylor guessed that his thinker power let him recognize the emotions that represented a silent scream for help.

The boy looked Chinese, and had a lanky build. He looked nervous and jumped a bit when Gallant's car pulled up next to him, but a look of dread crossed his face when he saw Taylor.

"Are you alright?" Gallant asked, stepping out of the car. "Is something wrong?"

The boy looked scared, but more scared of running away than of staying here. Barely. He compromised by pressing himself up against a wall. His eyes flickered toward Gallant before going back to Taylor. "She's the one that controls bugs?"

Gallant went still for a moment, then said, "Myriad, stay in the car." To him, he said, "Yes. What's troubling you?"

"I … I have a message for the girl who can control bugs." He reached slowly into his pocket and pulled out a phone.

He dialed it, but Gallant stopped him before he could hand it to Taylor. "I'd appreciate it if you kept your distance and put your phone on speaker," he said, his voice calm, even polite. "I'm sure you understand."

The boy nodded wordlessly and pressed a button.

"You presume," said a woman's voice from the phone, "that I _couldn't_ make a bomb the size of a paperclip that could level a city block. Frankly I'm insulted."

"Am I speaking with the famed bomb tinker Bakuda?" Gallant said. "I assure you I meant no offense. You are widely considered to be the single greatest threat to the city, and I couldn't forgive myself if I missed out on a chance to gather information on you."

There was a brief pause on the other line. "Well, it seems the bug girl has found herself a rather charming secretary. Now put her on the phone before I start killing people."

"I'm here," Taylor said through the window wishing that Bakuda had said _or_ instead of _before._

"Are you?" the woman asked. "I'll have to take your word on that. I seem to owe you a great deal. After you took down Lung, I ended up in charge of the ABB."

Gallant gave her a look that she couldn't read. What should she say? He had tried flattery, and he had more experience than she did. "Congratulations on your promotion. I expect to live to regret the part I've played in it."

"Yes, but not for very long," Bakuda said. "See, with Lung gone, some of the other gangs have gotten it into their stupid little heads that you can mess with the ABB and get away with it, so I thought, what can I do to make people fear us? What kind of performance would be so flat-out terrifying that Kaiser, Coil, and every parahuman with a record will wish that Lung was back out on the streets, just to keep me in line? And then I thought of you."

"I … okay."

"You and I are going to meet, face to face—or mask to mask, I suppose—in the same place you fought Lung. Understand?"

Taylor looked at Gallant, who shrugged. "Alright. I'll, um, I'll be looking forward to it."

"What?" Bakuda said. "No. No! Look, I have been orchestrating this all week, kid. You do _not_ get to just _cooperate_."

"What?"

"You're not choosing to come, I'm _making_ you come, got it? You're supposed to ask, 'What happens if I refuse?'"

Taylor hadn't done much research on Bakuda beyond reading her wiki entree. She regretted that now. "Okay. What happens if I refuse?"

"Then I kill a hostage every hour until you show up." The boy holding the phone inhaled sharply. "And just to show you I mean business …"

_Pop._

_Sploosh._

The boy dissolved into a thick, white liquid that collapsed and spilled over the sidewalk. He dropped the phone, soaked through his clothes, and dripped into the gutter. One moment he was there, the next he was a puddle.

Taylor stared, the absurdity of what she had just seen temporarily blocking out the horror of it. Gallant knelt down on the sidewalk and bowed his head, as if in reverence or respect.

"Gallant?" she asked. "What do we do?"

"I'll call this in. As for you, well, I apologize. I was hoping to drop you off where you met me today, but I fear I will be delayed."

_That's it?_ "She said that if I don't show up in an hour, she'll …"

"I knew him," he said suddenly. "His name was Neil Zhang. He was in my physics class. He couldn't stay on topic for more than twenty seconds at a time, and drove the lecture off course so many times the teacher took up smoking. I never met his mother, but that is not an encounter I am looking forward too."

"I'm sorry," she said because she couldn't think of anything else. _If we hadn't stopped and tried to help …_ "But we don't have much time."

"We'll do this _by the book._"

"What? But …"

"Myriad, I know where you're coming from on this, but the worst thing you can do in a hostage situation is capitulate. There are two ways to handle this. The first is to do nothing. Bakuda will kill a few people, realize that her tactics aren't working, and then try something else. The other way is to come down on her like the wrath of God and bring her to such utter ruin that the next time some villain thinks that going after innocent people to get to us is in _any way_ a good idea, they'll remember what we did to her, and they'll think again. We're doing this by the book because I do _not_ want to do this _again_."

He dialed his phone and began to talk through the earpiece in his helmet. Taylor watched through the car window as the clock ticked by. If they left now … but they weren't leaving now. Gallant was being put on hold.

Taylor decided to make a call of her own. "Hey, Lisa," she said softly so Gallant wouldn't overhear. "Can you talk?"

She laughed. "Taylor, I can _always_ talk. What's up? How's your date going? Did you guys come up with a name?"

"Um …"

"Oh, that bad, huh? I'm sorry to hear that. Did it end early or … oh my gosh, what happened?"

"Well …"

"Was there a dead body involved?"

"Yes." Or at least a dead puddle. Lisa's powers saved a lot of time, which was great because Taylor was on the clock. "Bakuda … _melted_ someone. She's supposed to only do bombs, but now she can kill people from a distance somehow."

"It's still bombs. Nothing's ever going to throw her off her theme. They're just implanted in someone's body and detonated remotely."

Taylor thought about the look of fear on Neil Zhang's face when he had seen him—seen _her._ Maybe he had thought that as long as he gave Bakuda what she wanted, she'd leave him alone. Meanwhile, Bakuda probably had a list matching every internal bomb with the phone number of the person they had been planted in. Standing up to bullies might make you a bigger target, but lying down for them just made you an easy one.

"She said that she's going to kill someone every hour unless I head over to the docks to meet her in the same place I fought Lung. Only, I didn't beat Lung, you guys did. I'm with Gallant right now, but he wants to go through all these procedures, and I don't know if we have time for that, so I was wondering …"

"If we could team up?" Lisa asked. "Well, I'll tell the others what's going on, but I wouldn't get your hopes up. Last time Lung was coming after us while now Bakuda is only coming after you, but more importantly, you've been hanging out with heroes a lot since then and standing up for truth and justice and all that jazz. If people see us working with you now, our street cred goes down the toilet."

"What? People are _dying_, Lisa, and you're worried about your image?"

"Not image," Lisa corrected. "Respect. If you don't have respect, you don't have anything. I can, however, give you some advice."

Taylor took a deep breath. _This better be darn good advice._ "Okay, what is it?"

"The first is that Bakuda, like most capes, is a performer at heart. She'll kill people she doesn't care about just to make a point or because it's convenient, but if she hates you—and she does—she won't kill you without putting on a show. You'll have her undivided attention, but you'll also have time. Use it."

"Okay." Having a psychotic bomb maker focusing on her wasn't encouraging, but she could see the silver lining. She needed to turn the negatives into positives as much as she could to get through this, and at the moment she had plenty of negatives to work with.

"The second is that Bakuda always wears a gas mask."

Taylor blinked. "Is that important?"

"Absolutely, but not as important as this. You need to know that you have two ways to deal with this situation. The first way is that you can be cautious. Go home, let something horrible happen to someone else because God knows you've had your turn. In a few weeks this will all be over and you'll still be alive."

One person every hour. "That's _not_ an option."

"The other way," Lisa continued, "is to be _you_."

Taylor waited for Lisa to go on. She didn't. "What do you mean? I mean, I … hello? Did you hang up on me?" She stared at her phone, and had a sudden urge to throw it at something.

_Don't be cautious. Be you._ But that didn't make any sense! If Lisa knew how cautious she was by nature … but she did. Didn't she?

_Bakuda always wears a gas mask._ A gas mask would be pretty easy to pick out of a crowd, even with bug senses.

_You'll have her undivided attention. Use it._ Taylor had an advantage that no other cape in the city had, but she couldn't use it unless she showed up.

_Be you._ The whole point of become a cape was so that she could be someone else … wasn't it? Someone who _wasn't_ cautious, who _wasn't _weak, someone who _could_ stand up to the bullies who made people into games.

Meanwhile, Gallant was still on the phone, explaining the problem instead of dealing with it … and he had left his keys in the car.

_Huh._

As soon as she had let the idea into her head, her head couldn't hold onto anything else. She had a way to get from point A to point B within the hour, and nothing else mattered. This would ruin any chance she had of being accepted into the Wards, but … well, Taylor hated group projects anyway.

With a glance to the side to make sure Gallant wasn't looking, Myriad slid into the driver's seat and stole his car.

WWW

A/n And that's chapter four. Hopefully, things are picking up enough for me to end on a cliffhanger. Gallant was a bit tricky to write. On one hand, he was pretty much the only member of the Wards that made people upset when he died, but on the other he was only present for one or two chapters, so I don't know how many of my readers really care about him. Worm is full of interesting background characters that I'd like to shine the spotlight on for a bit, but only a few I really care about. Still, I'm writing this to explore how things might have turned out if Taylor took the hero route, and considering the effect Gallant had on people after he died, I had to assume that he'd be even more important while alive. However, this is, first and last, Taylor's story, so feel free to call me out if I ever lose focus.

It turns out the Dinah's mom was Anna and Taylor's mom was Annette. It made me think of the Batman V Superman movie.

Anyway, thanks for the reviews everyone. They mean a lot to me.


	5. Chapter 5

The Other Way

Chapter Five

Dean Stansfield watched his personalized GALLANT license plate disappear around the corner to the sound of screeching tires.

_I don't think she has a driver's license._

Of course, considering where she was headed, being pulled over by the police was probably the best thing that could happen to her, or his car. Or the worst thing that could happen to the cops.

Otherwise, Myriad was still going to die. If Gallant was lucky, Bakuda would leave enough of her to be identified so he could explain to the girl's parents how he got their daughter killed. Unless ...

Unless he followed her and subdued her before she got into trouble—which she would never forgive him for—or helped her take down Bakuda, and that was impossible. Not the actual combat; fighting a mad tinker in her own territory along with an entire gang was just suicidal, but getting _permission_ for that?

Step one: ask Director Piggot for the go ahead.

Step two: get told no.

Step three: sit down and wait for Myriad to die horribly.

_Breaking_ the rules crossed his mind more than he was willing to admit, but that was a slippery slope he did not wish to go down. Heroes needed to stand for something, and if he broke the rules now, even to save a life, that would be a level of hypocrisy that he would never forget.

Shadow Stalker wouldn't forget it either, and she would bring it up every time he tried to remind her to fill out the requisite paperwork.

Even if he could get permission, he'd need a Mover to catch up to Myriad in time.

Fortunately, he knew every Mover the heroes had. Velocity was the the only one in the Protectorate, but while the Protectorate had less restrictions than the Wards, Velocity couldn't be expected to face Bakuda on his own.

Vicky could fly as fast as Velocity could run. She was even strong enough to take Gallant with him, but he had invited her on a mission yesterday and ... it hadn't worked out. She had gotten hurt and he had gotten his team in trouble, so he didn't feel right calling her up so soon.

Aegis had nearly the same powerset as Vicky, but if Vicky found out that he had asked Aegis for help and ignored her, she _would _take offense. People expected capes to focus on the big things, but every big thing was made up of little things, and every cause had an effect down the line. Vicky was ... well, not volatile, but expressive. Mercurial. Her sister Amy on the other hand was the opposite; she was outwardly calm, but she was under tremendous pressure and on the verge of snapping. The situation was delicate, and if if not as urgent as Myriad's, the stakes were at least as high.

Shadow Stalker was a Mover and often patrolled around the docks due to a long term grudge against one of the Undersiders. She might reach Myriad before Myriad found Bakuda, but even that wouldn't be an ideal situation. Shadow Stalker and Myriad were about the same age, and under the right circumstances they could end up as friends, but under the wrong circumstances ... no. Shadow Stalker didn't like the Wards and she didn't like people, so she'd either warn Myriad away from the overbearing bureaucracy if she was feeling generous, or drive her away if she was not. Maybe they would connect after Myriad had settled into the team, but right now he needed someone who _believed_ in the Wards program, someone he could always count on.

And just like that, the answer was obvious. He dialed Vista.

"Gallant!" she said as soon as she answered. "I mean, _hey._"

"Hey, Vista. I was wondering if you could do me a huge favor."

"Absolutely! What do you need?"

He couldn't ask her to go after Bakuda. Even if she could handle her, no Ward could pursue a cape with a body count without a tremendous amount of paperwork, and Gallant wasn't about to start breaking the rules now. He could, however, exploit them.

"Someone stole my car ..."

WWW

Myriad started out with the bravado born from attempting something that was just crazy enough to work. That wore off as soon as she learned something very important about driving.

She didn't know how to do it.

She swerved out of the way of incoming traffic, overcompensated, and ground the tires against the curb. Cars honked at her. That wasn't helpful.

_Gallant's going to kill when he gets his car back._

If _he gets his car back._

_No. If he doesn't get his car back, he's going to kill me harder._

Still, she was making good time, and collateral damage wasn't a priority. She remembered the way that boy had dissolved into a puddle right in front of her just because Bakuda wanted to make a point. She was never going to forget it.

Bugs flew in through the open windows, filling the back seat with her swarm. By the time she made it to the docks, she was ready. She, well not a plan, but an idea of what to do.

She parked Gallant's car on the side of the road. There wasn't too much damage done to the ... oh. Oh dear. That stop sign had left a dent that looked much worse from the outside, but that's what bumpers were for, right? She left the keys under the front tire and fled the scene of the crime.

Maybe he would find the car and ... no. It didn't matter. All that mattered was taking down Bakuda before she killed anyone else. Myriad couldn't count on Gallant, the heroes, or even the villains. All she had was herself ... and her swarm.

Good.

She didn't go straight to the rooftop where she had fought Lung; the last thing she wanted to do was what Bakuda wanted. She needed to find the bomb Tinker before the bomb Tinker found her, and Bakuda would either be waiting for her on the rooftop, or she'd be be waiting in a position where she would be able to see Myriad on the rooftop. Or Bakuda would would be waiting somewhere where she could see Myriad spying on the rooftop, _or_ ...

No, that was too complicated. It'd be better to just find an ABB thug and scare some answers out of him. Her experience with the Empire Eighty-Eight suggested that she was good at that.

After getting off the main road, she cut through narrow alleys, sending her bugs ahead of her so she wouldn't end up surrounded.

Just around a corner, she spotted a man wearing the red and green gang colors with a pipe in his hands facing the opposite direction.

Perfect.

She sent her swarm out to attack, herself trailing behind it with her baton extended. She knew her armor wouldn't be as effective against a pipe as it would be against a knife, but with enough bugs in his eyes to distract him, he wouldn't even be able to see her, let alone hit her.

As she got closer, a thought crossed her mind.

_He's not reacting. What is he, deaf?_

Her bugs landed on him, but he felt ... _wrong._ Bug eyes were so bad she ignored what her swarm saw entirely unless she actively focused on it, but their sense of touch was nearly decent. Instead of the rough texture of fabric that she had expected, the man felt ... smooth, like metal. He was shorter than he looked by a foot and a half and perfectly cylindrical.

_Oh crap._

He flickered, then disappeared entirely. In his place was ...

_Well, what do you know,_ she thought in a surreal moment of absolute lucidity. The calm before the storm. _I came her expecting a game of hide-and-seek, and instead I'm playing Minesweeper._

WWW

It was a short walk across the city as rooftops warped to bridge the gaps between them and space shortened itself. Gallant had grown accustomed to Vista's powers over the years, and he was quite used to the feeling of vertigo that he experienced every time the girl took the fabric of reality and skipped rope with it.

It still messed with his GPS, though.

"Hold on a moment, please," he said as they reached the outskirts of the docks district.

Vista stretched reality back into shape, or at least mostly. _Reality_ knew what shape it was supposed to be, and it would go back to normal if Vista left it alone for a few minutes. _"Recalculating,"_ his phone said.

"So how dumb does someone have to be to steal your car?" Vista asked.

"Very," Gallant said. "But that was far from the worst decision she has made today."

"Really?" Her arms were dangling at her sides, so she put her hands on her hips, then crossed them behind her back in a sort of parade rest as she struggled to find a posture that looked casual and relaxed. They had known each other for nearly two years, but she was still like that around him. "How could she top this?"

"Hopefully we'll catch her before she gets that far."

Vista considered that. "Hold on. Are we arresting her, or rescuing her?"

"Officially?"

The colors around her head shifted, suggesting a sarcastic mindset. "What do you think?"

"I only do rescue missions, you know that." Not everyone he rescued appreciated his help, and some resisted violently, but he did what he could.

"And are you rescuing her from a life of crime, or ..."

And explosion tore through the air, making Gallant nearly drop his phone. It wasn't a standard blast that he might expect from a grenade or C-4. Instead, it sounded like a sonic boom and even at a distance left his ears ringing.

He looked down at the map on his phone and at the dot that indicated where his car was, then he looked in the direction of the explosion.

Myriad had planned this. By throwing herself into danger, she forced him to either abandon her─which he couldn't do─or help her take on the whole of the ABB without any plan, backup or support, which he _also _couldn't do.

Either that, or Myriad was trying to commit suicide by super villain. Gallant hoped it was the first one.

"I'm trying to rescue her," he said, "from that."

WWW

Myriad wasn't dead, but she felt like a bomb had gone off in her head.

No, she thought, remembering the boy who had first contacted her on Bakuda's behalf, she did _not_ feel like that. Her ears were ringing though, and when she opened her eyes, she found that her lenses had cracked.

_Compound eyes,_ she thought. _It looks like I have compound eyes now, like a bug!_ She smiled at that. Something prodded her and rolled her onto her back, and she stared up into the darkening sky.

She heard ... not words, but noises. Voices. There was a figure above her, but with her vision shattered she couldn't put the pieces together in any recognizable pattern. Myriad remembered her first days after she got her powers, when she could see through a hundred thousand eyes, making it impossible to see anything at all. Back then, she had tried to _force_ the countless images into a single form, but her powers didn't work that way. Her _mind_ didn't work that way. She had to relax into it.

Between what she could see and what her swarm could sense, she put together the image of a man holding a hunting rifle.

_Progress!_

She even picked up a few words as the ringing in her ears began to subside.

"Don't ... much choice ... have to call ... don't move."

There was another person nearby. Someone shorter. A girl. "... have to ..."

"Bakuda ... watch ... before she wakes up."

_Someone's waking up? That's me. I'm waking up. And now ... they're calling Bakuda to tell her that they found me._

She had an idea to jump to her feet, grab the rifle away and ... hit him with pepper spray or something when he wasn't expecting it. _Bad idea._ She felt woozy, and there was a chance that she would jump to her feet, fall over, and get shot. Attack him with her swarm? No. He'd panic, and might shoot her anyway, or he might shoot the girl who wasn't wearing a maybe-hopefully-bulletproof costume.

No, what she needed to do was disarm him without him knowing about it. Could she pull his gun away with bugs? No. Disable it, maybe? Could work. She'd have to, what, have a bunch of spiders crawl inside and fill it with silk to goop everything up. All she knew about guns she learned on TV, but people spent a lot of time cleaning them so they would work properly.

She reached out with her power for every spider within range. She had only brought with her the bugs that could fly fast enough to make it into the car window, but spiders could live anywhere where there were bugs to eat, and bugs could live anywhere. Basements, closets ... a backpack in the abandoned ferry station bathroom. Was she in range? Nice. They hadn't eaten each other yet.

Myriad noticed the girl trying to make a call. She covered the phone with dragonflies, and the girl dropped it with a scream. The man stepped back and pointed his gun at her.

_Well, there goes the element of surprise._ She'd need to swarm him and hope that he didn't shoot her in the head. That was the smart thing to do. The safe thing. _Cautious._

_Be cautious,_ Lisa had said. _Or be you._

That still didn't make much sense. _Be you?_ Be the bumbling novice cape who kept on getting into more trouble than she could handle? Be the bullied loner who was always holding back because anything else would only make things worse? Was that who she was?

Who was she before that? Before she had gotten powers, before Emma had turned on her.

Before her mother died.

"The last person I saw who called Bakuda died in front of me." Her voice sounded off, like her words were beetles crawling out of her mouth instead of actual sounds. She kept going. "She wanted me to watch him die, because she thought I would care."

The man said something, and it took a moment for the words to register. "Don't move!"

"I remember him being afraid. I remember him _dying_ afraid, because Bakuda wanted to make a point. She had put a bomb in him, and the whole time he had known that she could kill him if he disobeyed. So he didn't disobey, and she killed him on a whim."

Myriad had managed to piece together the broken images of the two people. The girl was young, maybe about her age, wearing a school uniform. Immaculata, the Christian private school rich kids went to. The man was older, well past his middle years. Neither of them looked like gang members any more than Neil Zhang had.

Before her mother died, Taylor had been able to believe in people, her friends, her family, even strangers. That was what had made her such an easy target when Emma had turned on her. Taylor hadn't been able to understand recreational cruelty, and she had tried to appeal to her former best friend's better nature that Emma just didn't have anymore.

_People need something to believe in._ Taylor used to have that, long ago.

"If you call her," she continued, "she may kill you for the same reason. If you shoot me, she may kill you for denying her the chance to kill me herself. If you walk away and forget you saw me, she may kill you just because she's bored. You could die afraid, brave, or just unlucky, and as long as Bakuda is around to pull the trigger, you'll never be safe."

She had gotten into an argument with Gallant just a few minutes ago about false hope and comforting lies. If Bakuda had said to people, "Do what I say and I won't blow you up," that would have been a false hope for Neil Zhang, and maybe these people too.

_Are heroes worth believing in?_

She rolled over and pushed herself to her feet. She felt wobbly and the ground didn't seem to want to hold still, but no one shot her.

The girl said something. "Can you stop her?"

"I stopped Lung," Myriad said. "That's why she wants me, so she can make people as afraid of her as they were of him. Worst case scenario, she kills me and settles down because she has nothing left to prove." She hoped it wouldn't come to that.

"Are you going to kill her?" It was the old man.

"No." She thought about it. "Maybe. If I have to." She didn't know if she could kill someone if it came down to that. For all she knew killing people might be easy. She was afraid it would.

"Don't. There are nearly a hundred people with bombs in their heads that will go off if Bakuda's heart stops beating. The ones she planted all over the city might go off too."

"Good to know." That explained why no one had shot her yet. If they missed, she'd kill them, and if they hit, she'd kill everyone. "Anything else?"

"You shouldn't stay here." It was getting easier to hear now. Myriad didn't think that her ears were getting better, but she was getting better at interpreting the muted sounds. "Everyone in the city will have heard that sonic bomb go off, and Bakuda will be on her way. You don't want to be around when she gets here." He looked at the girl. "We don't either."

WWW

"Yeesh," Vista said. "Sorry about your car. But a fresh coat of paint, a new bumper, a new windshield, maybe replace that headlight while you're at it─"

"Vista."

"And it will be as good as new." She shrunk it down to the size of a toy car and put it in her utility belt. "Hey look, the keys are still here."

"The car was just a rationalization for coming, and if Myriad's not here, then she's somewhere worse." Not only were Bakuda and the ABB looking for her, but the Undersiders frequented the docks, and he had seen what they could do to all the Wards put together.

He needed to call this in, but he knew what he would be ordered to do afterwards. Fall back, pull out, stay out of trouble and let an adult handle the situation. The rules were in place to protect him, but sometimes ... sometimes Gallant wanted to protect someone else.

Before he told HQ what was going on, he decided to make sure he had something substantial to say.

"About fifty yards behind you," he said to Vista, "there's a young gentleman in ABB gang colors watching us. Would you be willing to bring him over for me?"

"Absolutely," Vista said. She turned around and squeezed the fifty yards into five feet. When the young gentleman screamed, turned around, and tried to run, he tripped over a sudden swelling of the sidewalk.

Gallant offered him a hand and helped him to his feet. "Good evening. I hate to bother you like this, but Bakuda has made some deeply concerning threats recently, and I was wondering if you would be so kind as to tell me _everything you know._"

The man thrashed against his grip for all the good it did. Even if Gallant wasn't wearing power armor, the man was nearly a head shorter than him. "I don't know nothing." That was neither true nor grammatically correct. "I didn't do nothing. Now let me go! I know my rights."

"You're afraid," Gallant noted.

"No I'm not! I'm not afraid of you!"

"Not of me, no," he admitted. A finger on his left hand began to glow with emotional energy. "I can help you with that."

WWW

"Visual on target. Target at Hill and Sixth, heading north."

Bakuda drove down Seventh, or at least had Number Twenty-Four drive down Seventh. Out of all the bombs she had made, Number Twenty-Four would always have a special place in her heart. If she blew it up, Number Twenty-Four would make its host breath fire until the man cooked himself.

It made her sad that she might never have a reason to pull the trigger, but that was just poor planning on her part. When she had planted her little babies in her gang members, she had started with the top lieutenants of the ABB, people with experience, loyalty, and competence, and she had used the bombs she loved the most. By the time she had gotten down to pulling Unlucky Joe off the street who wouldn't be able to do much more than stop a bullet, she was reduced to bombs like Number Two-Ninety-Eight, which scattered its host across dimensions. Sure, it _sounded_ good on paper, knowing that the host would have a spleen on Earth Aleph and a kidney on Earth Zet, but what it came down to was a man vanishing into thin, transdimensional air.

"You still got her location?" Bakuda said into her radio.

"Affirmative," he said. Who was he? Bakuda couldn't tell by the voice. Probably Number Thirty-Something or Forty-Something. She'd had some fun ideas in that range. "She is about forty feet north of the Sixth-Hill intersection."

Bakuda hefted her grenade launcher and did some calculations in her head. _If she is forty feet north of Hill on Sixth and I'm ... what am I? One hundred and ninety. I'm one hundred and ninety feet north of Hill on Seventh, so she's in that direction one block over, so I'll need an arc over that hardware store that will put her inside the blast radius but outside the kill zone ... _"Give me her location again."

"Still at forty feet north of the intersection. Target is stationary, repeat, target is stationary."

_Crap!_ If a Master was doing nothing, then that usually meant that whatever she controlled was doing that much more.

_Precision is for the weak_, she decided. Bakuda aimed her grenade launcher at an angle that felt right and pulled the trigger.

_I was really hoping that this would turn into a strategically intricate game of chess,_ she thought as the grenade disappeared behind view and exploded. _Why do I always end up playing battleship?_

WWW

Going deaf in one ear was probably the best thing that could have happened to Myriad after having one of Bakuda's bombs blow up in front of her. The way a shattered eardrum messed up her balance bothered her more than having bad hearing, and her bugs could somehow help with that.

She stumbled a bit at first, but when she had her bugs crawl out on the ground in front of her, it was like her swarm was able to grab onto the world to make it stop spinning. She was _connected_ to her surroundings with her power in a way she hadn't imagined before.

She was out of her depth, she knew, but she was learning as she went. The months she had spent making her costume and practicing with her powers had been a waste of time compared to this. She couldn't learn how to be a cape by sitting in her room and looking up bug facts on wikipedia; she learned by _pushing_ herself.

And nothing pushed her harder than a homicidal maniac with a bomb fetish.

She could no longer feel broken glass between her feet. The sonic blast had shattered a few windows in the area as well as cracking her lenses. Myriad supposed that she was lucky to not get shards of glass in her eyes. _If this is what luck is like, I can't afford the alternative._

She heard something rumbling. A car engine? She couldn't tell where it was coming from, but it was getting louder. There wasn't anything on her street, so she had her swarm search out anything car shaped.

She found it when one of her bugs hitched a ride on what felt like a windshield. Some of the rest of her swarm converged on its location, and found the vehicle open like a jeep. There were three people inside, and one of them ... one of them was wearing a mask. A gas mask?

Myriad smiled. _I have you now, Bakuda!_

Then she heard a ... clink? A crash? Either something loud and far away or something quiet and nearby. She looked around behind her, and through her broken vision she saw ... a caninster?

She expected it to explode. Instead, it did the opposite.

Myriad fell forward as the bomb imploded and sucked everything into it like a miniature black hole. She scrambled to grab onto something─_anything_─that could keep her away from having her life suck even more than it already did, and she found a sewer grate. It was slimy, gritty, and half covered with things she'd rather not think about, and she slid her fingers through the panels like her life depended on it.

The vacuum pelted her with pebbles and debris, but the implosion ended after a few seconds. Myriad panted for breath, stood up, and took an accounting of the damages.

She was fine. Her fingers hurt because she hadn't grabbed onto the sewer grate as much as wedged them in, but she'd live.

She couldn't say the same for her swarm. She had sent some of her bugs out as scouts, but everything she could use in a fight, her stingers and her biters, had stayed with her, and those had been sucked into Bakuda's implosion. The only bugs that were small enough and low enough to the ground to survive were a few ants, and Myriad couldn't defeat a supervillain with ants. With enough time, she could gather a new swarm from the bugs already around the docks, but ...

She heard another _clink._ Myriad realized that the sound was deliberate, that Bakuda could have made her grenades explode on impact instead of giving them a half-second delay, but the point wasn't to surprise her with the bombs, but to scare her. It was like cocking a gun before pulling the trigger.

Of course, if Bakuda thought that that degree of psychological warfare was going to have an effect on her, then that mad scientist had clearly never gone to high school. Myriad took advantage of the warning, dropped to the ground, and readied herself for another black hole.

Instead, the bomb hit her with a flash freeze. Coldness crashed into her like a truck, and while her costume protected her from most of it, her goggles frosted over to blind her even further, and her few bugs that were still alive froze solid.

Then, half blind, half deaf, and with her powers effectively negated, Taylor saw a fractured blur and heard the rumbling of an engine as a vehicle came down the street.

"Game over, kid." The voice was mechanical, robotic, like a text to speech app. "You lose."

WWW

"Hello Director Piggot," Gallant said. "I have something to report."

"Gallant. Who died this time?"

"No one, fortunately. I have good news."

"I doubt it. Keep talking."

Gallant prided himself on his ability to work well with people. Nearly everyone he knew liked him, and he liked them in return. Director Piggot was the exception. She disliked everyone on principle and didn't care if they liked her or not. All she cared about was respect, and she respected you more if she liked you less.

It made talking to her difficult.

"Bakuda has made her move. She's been implanting bombs in all the new ABB recruits, and they now have at least ten times the numbers they had when she took over."

"I see. And how do you know this?"

He took a deep breath. "I Mastered a non-powered individual without authorization. I will write up a full report of my actions when I return and await disciplinary review."

"Do so. Anything else?"

"Yes. There is a rumor among the ABB members that Oni Lee only submitted to Bakuda's leadership if she worked to free Lung, and if she doesn't make her move soon, he will."

"A rumor," Piggot repeated.

"A rumor. Director, if Oni Lee can duplicate Bakuda's bombs as easily as he can duplicate hand grenades ..."

"I can imagine. Where are you now?"

"I'm at the docks."

"Less than an hour ago you were watching over a murder scene. I assume you had a good reason for abandoning your post?"

"Yes, Director. I will include that in my written report. With your permission, I will remain here to gather intel on the gang's movements for the time being. I'm already in position, and my powers are better suited for this than combat."

"No. Not without backup."

"I have backup. Vista's with me."

"I see. Well, it's good to know that you have a twelve-year-old girl keeping you safe."

Gallant couldn't tell if Piggot was being sarcastic or not. Despite her age, Vista was possibly the strongest member of the Wards, and stronger than most of Brockton Bay's Protectorate.

"You know that if she's with me, I won't take any unnecessary risks, for her sake if not my own." _Come on,_ he thought. _Take the bait. _The PRT tried to keep Wards out of danger, but sometimes the most dangerous thing to do was to have the heroes do nothing.

"Very well. You are not to engage with Bakuda or Oni Lee if you see them, and keep your distance from the rest of the gang wherever possible."

"Understood, Director." He hung up.

"We good to go?" Vista asked.

He nodded. "We're good to go."

"Alright! Let's go to the party."

Before they had parted ways with Bruce Lau, their Mastered informant, the young man had received a radio broadcast from Bakuda inviting everyone to a "party" on Hill Street. "Anyone who misses the fireworks," she had warned, "will become the fireworks."

Despite the artificial courage Gallant has supplied him with, Bruce Lau had left in a hurry.

"Remember, be careful, keep your distance, and keep your eyes open. If Oni Lee shows up, we leave no matter what. Bakuda is one thing, but he could kills us both without trying." Gallant's powers didn't work properly on the clinically insane, and Vista's ability to bend space was useless against someone who could teleport. "If he doesn't show up, we leave as soon as we find Myriad."

WWW

If there was one thing Taylor liked less than homicidal maniacs who blew people up for fun, it was crowds.

A crowd gathered around her. Men, women, children, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, in cars or on foot. Taylor was on her knees in the middle of a four-way intersection with three separate guns pointed at her head. In front of her stood Bakuda.

"Well, that's enough waiting," Bakuda said. "Let's get this party started! But before we begin, I believe I promised you guys fireworks, so ... Is Number Two-Fifty-Seven here? Two-Fifty-Seven? No? Then you're late, and if you're late, you're late."

At an unseen signal, a woman died. One moment she was alive, and the next lightning burst out of her and she collapsed as a smoking husk without having time to scream. The people around her screamed for her as lightning arced through the crowd. Those closest to her fell, but they were able to get back up again. She didn't.

"Huh," Bakuda said. "So you were here. Might have said something. I didn't give everyone numbers for fun, you know."

There was no remorse in her mechanical voice, no regret for having just killed a person—one of _her_ people. But what were people to creatures like her? Why would she kill someone for no reason?

_Why did Emma stuff me in that locker?_

It was a game.

All of it.

_Just a game._

She felt sick. The whole point of coming here was to _stop_ Bakuda from killing anyone else, but the promised hour wasn't up yet. If she had just stayed out of the way like she was _supposed_ to, _less_ people would have died, but no, she had blundered into ABB territory and made everything worse. She _always_ made everything worse.

_Did you really think you could make a difference? It doesn't matter if you're in costume or not, you're still_ you.

She thought back to Lisa's last piece of advice. _Be you._ Right, because that had worked out so well for her. Taylor had been Taylor her whole life, and she still sucked at it. Why had she even listened to her in the first place? Because they had gone shopping together? Tattletale was a _villain_, and she was probably hanging out with the Undersiders right now laughing her butt of at how she had managed to tie up the loose end that had seen their faces.

"So," Bakuda said, "let's talk. You got a name?"

Taylor looked up at her and remained silent. It was a token of defiance, but it was all she could manage. Then she noticed something.

_Spiders._ Bakuda's bombs had cleared out most of the bugs Taylor had brought with her and the docks weren't outstanding with their spider population, but a hundred thousand spiders were marching towards her with single minded purpose.

"No?" Bakuda asked. "Then you're Worm now. Hello, Worm. Let's talk about fear. Are you afraid right now?"

Her backpack! She stuffed her backpack full of spiders as a security/spite measure, and had called them out the last time someone had pointed a gun at her. It had taken them a while, but they had arrived. What could she do with them?

"No? Okay then. Now, this question you will answer or I'll blow someone up. I feel like that's the only way to get a reaction out of you. What do you think I'm going to do with you?"

Taylor forced herself to talk, and did her best to keep her voice steady. "You're going to kill me."

Bakuda laughed, but her mechanical voice made the sound nearly impossible to recognize. "See, that's the problem. Dying just isn't that scary. Do you remember how old you were when you first understood what it meant to die? Mortality didn't make you wake up screaming. If it did anything, it made you a little sad that knowing that the people you care about aren't going to stick around forever."

Taylor thought of her mom, lying in a coffin, then being lowered into the ground. So much ceremony for something that a ceremony couldn't cover. So much nonsense to think that a mother could be grieved in half a day.

_Stop it,_ she told herself. _Focus. Be here in the present. It won't last that long._

"The problem," Bakuda continued, "is that you don't really know what it is. Heaven, hell, judgement, reincarnation, oblivion; death could be anything, so the only thing it can't be is frightening. Not really. It can't fill you with the kind of terror you can sink your teeth into. I can't make you fear death, Worm, but I can make you fear me."

_She won't kill you without putting on a show, _Lisa had said. _You'll have her undivided attention, but you'll also have time. _

Earlier she had had the idea to clog a gun with spider silk. Now she'd see what the idea was worth. How many spiders could fit in a gun? How much silk did she need to stop a bullet? No, it was better to gum up the firing mechanism than the barrel. Somehow.

"And you're going to tell me what you're going to do to me beforehand so I can be afraid of it." _Keep talking,_ she thought. _Keep monologuing. Give me time to find a way out._

"Now you're catching on. See, the Undersiders defeated Lung, and Armsmaster arrested him, but you Worm? You bit off his worm. In terms of reputation that was worse than devastating, that was hilarious. So that's why I'm going to something even funnier to you." She pulled out a small capsule about the size of a pill. "Do you know what the Manton Effect is?"

None of the men around her noticed the spiders crawling on their clothes, but if Taylor had a spider run along someone's arm, they'd know she was up to something. "Does that have something to do with radiation poisoning?" No, she was thinking of the Manhattan Project, not the Manton Effect. Still, if Taylor got a question wrong, what was Bakuda going to do? Give her a bad grade?

"Ugh, Parahuman Studies One-oh-one? Named after William Manton? It's a power limitation. Some powers don't work on organics, and other work only on organics. Have you seen Vista at work? She can bend space, but not people. When I tried to make a bomb based off of her powers, it came out backwards. This little baby? It bends _people._

"I thought about giving you the same brain surgery treatment I gave everyone else here and make you bring me my slippers and sting my enemies out of fear of permanent disfigurement, but where would the fun in that be? No, instead I'm going to shove this thing up your nose, detonate it, and see what happens. Maybe you'll get a huge, bulbous head and itty bitty fetus legs, or bloated hands with arms to small to lift them. Maybe you'll end up some lopsided Quasimoto freak that not even a Case 53 would touch, and do you know what will happen next, Worm? I'll keep you like that. I'll show you off to my friends, rivals and all my enemies so everyone will know what happens when you mess with the ABB, and after you've gotten used to being a freak, after you start to think that maybe the life of a grotesque is still a life?

"Then I'll kill you."

WWW

Gallant watched Bakuda and Myriad from a long way off. He had been hoping to find the girl near Bakuda's gathering. He had not been hoping to find her in the middle of it.

"What's happening?" Vista asked. The two of them stood on a rooftop about three blocks away. They could move quickly with her powers when they had to, but people noticed when the tops of buildings squeezed together like an accordian, and they needed to be subtle.

"At the moment they're still talking, but Bakuda is getting more and more excited while Myriad is ... she's scared, but it looks like she's determined, too. I think she has a plan, but she doesn't know if her plan will work." Nearly all of the Wards had some sort of Tinker-tech visor. Gallant had built-in binoculars to read people's emotions from a distance. Vista could switch to heat vision because the only thing that could inhibit her powers were living people. "If we had to, how easily could you pull her out from the middle of that?"

She frowned. "I could bring us to the edge of the crowd in a heartbeat, but into it? I'd have to do some weird overhang stunt, and we'd spend way too much time surrounded by armed gang members and the lady with the grenade launcher."

He nodded. If there had been a gap in the crowd, she'd be able to work with it, but ... could he call for backup? Aegis could fly in and grab her, but while he could survive a bullet without a problem, a grenade to the face was pushing it. Vicky would have a better chance and her aura might make the ABB hesitate, but Bakuda wasn't using standard grenades. Velocity could get into the crowd just fine, but carrying Myriad would slow him down on the way out.

No, what the heroes needed most right now was _time._

He pulled out a phone─not his, but one he had borrowed from Neil Zhang after Bakuda had melted him─and hit redial.

Bakuda's emotions went from annoyed to confused when she saw who was calling her, and she answered.

"I know who's number this is," she said. "And if you're still alive after me killing you, then I'd advise you not to push your luck."

The phone still had a bit of slime─a bit of Neil─on it, but Gallant didn't rise to the taunt. "No, your bomb did it's job. I suspect you've had practice using your inventions on _people_."

"Hold on, I recognize this voice. You're that charming secretary from earlier. I'm right in the middle of something, so I'll call you back."

"Yes, you're in the middle of holding a public execution for the newest member of the Wards." It was a lie, but a believable one. "Lung did whatever he wanted to other villains, but not even he was foolish enough to kill a hero."

"You're right, he wasn't," Bakuda said. "He's also not here; I am. Lung was too cautious and too small-minded. He thought that if he played nice your side would leave him alone, and now he's in a cage. I'm going all out."

"You say that," Gallant said, "but it still seems like you are holding back."

There was a pause. "Are you trying to provoke me? That's hilarious! Keep going."

_No, I'm trying to stall, and I hope this doesn't backfire._ "I've seen some of your work, and, no offense meant, but it's derivative. Variations on a theme. You kill people with bombs. You kill them in creative ways, sure, but you still kill them. Do you have any idea how long we've been doing that? Hundreds of years. We've blown up entire cities before, and we already have enough bombs to wipe out everyone on this planet _and_ everyone on Earth Aleph, just in case we're feeling generous. Killing people with bombs is, intellectually speaking, safe, easy, and beneath you."

Gallant heard a crunch of static on the phone, and only seeing Bakuda's emotions allowed him to interpret the noise as laughter. "And what do you have in mind? A bomb that brings people back to life?"

"That would be impressive," he said. "But have you considered what you could do against an Endbringer?" He paused to let his words sink in. "We've fought them for years, and the entire Protectorate combined hasn't been able to kill one of them yet. Not even _Scion_ has been able to do more than drive them off. If you expressed your power to the fullest, perhaps _you_ could succeed where they had failed. Think about it, Bakuda. If you bring down an Endbringer, you wouldn't just be Brockton Bay's most wanted anymore, you'd be a global _treasure._ Alternatively, you could continue to squander your talents in a gang war. You pick."

"Hmm," Bakuda said. "Hm-hm? Hmm ... yeah, I think I'll stick with the gang war, thanks. It just seems like more fun, you know?"

Gallant sighed. _One day. One day that will work._ "Disappointing. All the same, you would do well release Myriad."

"Who? Oh, you mean Worm."

"No, I mean Myriad."

"Meh. Tomato tuh-mah-to. Why's that?"

"Because you are invading her personal space, and if you do not step away right now, I will—"

"You'll what? You'll write me a mean note? Tell my mother? Ooh! Would I get a kill order for this? I've been trying to win one of those since I moved here, but you guys are just so damn stingy with those things."

"You will leave me with no other option but to recommend a highly _skilled_ and licenced therapist."

There was a pause.

"What? Do you call that a threat? I'm not just heckling you; I really don't know. That ... that didn't even make sense! It's almost impressive how bad of a threat that was. Anyway, I need to get back to screwing a little girl. Uh, not sexually, I mean that when I'm done with her, there's a chance that she'll literally end up screw-shaped. Which would be pretty funny."

She hung up.

"Well?" Vista asked, looking up at him. "Did it work?"

_End up screw shaped? _"I managed to stall her for a few minutes," Gallant said, focusing on the positive instead of the fact that she had warned both her and possibly Oni Lee that they were in the area. Bakuda's emotions were mostly unchanged, but Myriad's ... "Now that's interesting."

"What?"

"Get ready."

"For what?"

"Anything. Myriad's planning something. I just don't know what it is."

WWW

Gallant was planning something. Taylor just didn't know what it was.

She had only heard Bakuda's half of the conversation, but it seemed like the plan had something to do with zombie-bombs, which seemed like a terrible idea. Lisa was planning something too, but the four-word text message she had sent her made even less sense.

_widow left foot mask_

Taylor stared at the message, hoping that the words would rearrange themselves into something that made sense. _The widow left her foot in a mask? The widow's left foot _is_ a mask? Black widow? My mask? Bakuda's mask? Or maybe she meant window instead of widow._

Or maybe Lisa was messing with her. Taylor couldn't discount that.

"Alright," Bakuda said, hanging up. "Now where were we? Did I finish my monologue or ... hold on, are you one your phone?"

"Uh."

Bakuda motioned to one of her men who kicked the phone out of her hands. She picked it up and froze.

"Shoot her. Shoot her now."

"What?" one of the three men said. "I thought you said you were going to blow her up, make a show out of it."

"I know what I said, halfwit! This is what I'm saying now! Shoot her until she stops moving."

_Great, so those four words mean something to _her.

Three guns were fixed on her. Three triggers were pulled. Three guns failed to fire, and three men fell to the ground screaming as spiders swarmed across their faces. She didn't even need to have them bite; having a spider on your face produced a certain visceral reaction in most people.

Myriad rose to her feet and charged Bakuda. With one hand she reached behind her and pulled out her baton, and with the other she dropped a black widow spider from her finger like a yoyo on a string. It landed on Bakuda's left boot and crawled inside.

Bakuda brought her grenade launcher up to block, perhaps realizing that it lacked a certain subtlety as a short ranged weapon. Along the way, Gallant's advice came back to her.

_What to do in a hostage situation?_

_Come down on her like the wrath of God._

_Bring her to ruin._

_Do something so horrible, no one will ever try that again._

The black widow sank its fangs into Bakuda's foot. Myriad didn't know how much venom black widows usually used, but just to be safe, she had her spider squeeze out every last drop. The symptoms included muscle cramps, nausea, and even mild hallucinations, but it could take Bakuda up to an hour to start feeling it.

Until then, Bakuda spent a moment to yell at her minions, but fear engendered a certain kind of loyalty that dissipated when you needed help, and none of them wanted to be the first one to step forward. Myriad spent that same moment to cover Bakuda's face with moths to blind her, then swung her baton into Bakuda's unguarded ribs, and when the villain doubled over, Myriad brought it up and smashed her mask.

Bakuda toppled over and fell on her back. One of the eye pieces of her mask had shattered, and Bakuda looked up at her with a single, ice blue eye.

"_No more games,"_ Myriad said. She let go of her baton, dropped down onto Bakuda's chest, and tazed her with her stun gun.

It was simply bad luck that the only area of exposed flesh within reach was Bakuda's eyeball.

WWW

Gallant arrived before the crowd had time to disperse. Even if Vista hadn't been stretching out the gaps between them and parting them like the Red Sea, they still would have gotten out of his way. People did that for capes, especially if they were used to getting pushed around.

"Everyone remain calm," he said. Myriad's hearing was still messed up, and she was starting to worry that she had ended up permanently deaf in one ear, but his voice sounded louder than normal as though he had megaphone built into his power armor. "You've all had a bad day, but the trouble is nearly over. Just sit tight and wait for a few minutes, and we'll make sure that Bakuda is wrapped up and ready for the Birdcage and that all of _you_ get the medical treatment you need."

He turned to Myriad, and his voice dropped down to normal levels. "Sorry I couldn't help more, but you still handled the situation perfectly. How do you feel?"

She shrugged. "Fine." A bit numb, a little jumpy, but Gallant could see emotions, couldn't he? Why did he bother asking?

"If you say so. By the way, this is Vista. Vista, Myriad. Myriad, Vista."

The younger cape who was peering down at Bakuda. "Holy crap. Did she always have a charred, smoking eye socket, or is she just having a really bad day?"

"Today's been worse for others," Myriad said, remembering the people Bakuda had blown up.

"Must be stiff competition."

_Stiff,_ she thought, seeing the unintended pun. _Ha ha. Funny._ She gasped. "She needs an ambulance. I might have gone too far on her, and if she dies, all of her bombs go off."

"On it," Gallant said, pulling out his phone.

Myriad stood in the middle of the crowd, not sure what to do with herself. The three men who'd had guns pointed at her a few minutes ago had disappeared. It made sense that they wouldn't want to stick around now that the tables had turned, especially if they had joined the ABB before Bakuda had started forcing people into the gang. If they showed up for medical treatment, would they get arrested for past crimes? Or would they leave the bombs in their heads that Bakuda could blow up under the slightest inclination to avoid going to jail?

Myriad scanned the crowd, trying to pick out the old man and the girl she had run into earlier, but between her broken lenses and the bad lighting, all she got was a headache. Some of the people had dropped their weapons, relieved to no longer need them, but most of them held on to their crowbars and baseball bats, if only to have something to hold on to.

"Alright," Gallant said. "The PRT is sending a full unit along with a med team and bomb squad, and some of the Protectorate are coming over too. Do you want to stay to meet them, or have you had enough capes for one day?"

"Honestly," she said, collapsing her baton and putting it back into its compartment, "I think I'd rather just go home."

He nodded, as though expecting her to say that. "I understand. Vista, would you mind walking her back?"

"Sure."

Myriad wanted to say that she didn't need an escort, but it wasn't worth the trouble. "I'm sorry about your car," she said instead, then cursed herself. Why did she have to bring that up?

Gallant fell silent for a moment. "I know why you did what you did."

_To get here faster? Because it was an emergency?_

"That was a classic case of self-sabotage," he said. "You were convinced that you weren't qualified to be one of the Wards because of who you were, and that was something you did not want to face. So you stole my car to get yourself disqualified because of something you _did _because that would have been easier to face." He put a hand on her shoulder. "If you don't want to join the Wards, you are free to walk away, but you should know that there is _nothing_ you could do to make me not want you on the team."

A gust of wind could have knocked her over, and she didn't say a word as Vista took her by the hand and led her away from the crowd. They were halfway to the ferry station before one of them spoke.

"He does that sort of thing a lot," Vista admitted. "You, uh, you never really get used to it."

WWW

A/n So that's chapter five. I played with a few scenarios about Gallant calling different people for help. Some of those options would have made it a worse story, others might actually have made for a better one. Glory Girl might have found her, grabbed her, and flown away before Myriad could save the day. Shadow Stalker might have tried to tranquilize and arrest her before gaining a degree of grudging respect for the new hero. Honestly, that probably would have added to the problems and therefore drama and therefore quality of the story, but that same idea has already been used by ack1308 in Confrontation. Out of all the Worm fanfiction I've read (admittedly not a lot), Confrontation is the best by far.

Thanks for the reviews, everyone. I reread them every time I need to motivate myself to write. Taylor will (probably) join the Wards officially next chapter, so if you have any favorite heroes that you feel don't get enough attention, let me know and I'll try to spotlight them a bit.


	6. Chapter 6

The Other Way

Chapter Six

Tattletale put her binoculars away and smiled. "I love it when a plan comes together."

"So are we fighting," Bitch growled from atop Brutus' back, "or are we _not_ fighting?"

"No, see, we don't need to fight because the plan worked."

Bitch paused to consider what _need_ and _fighting_ had to do with each other, gave up, and scowled.

"Uh-huh," Regent said. "You keep saying _plan _a lot, but I'm starting to think that you just make stuff up as you go along and take credit for everything if it works out."

"_When_ it works out." Okay, maybe Regent had a point, as odd as it sounded. Maybe _plan _was a strong word, but _strategic positioning_ worked just as well, and what did he expect her to do? Admit that she didn't know everything? Ha!

"Tattletale," Grue said, his voice sounding deep and hollow. "At what point did you figure out that Bug was a hero?"

Tattletale forced a grin. She didn't like lying to her team, but she couldn't convincingly play dumb to save her life. "Since Sunday night."

"Sunday night," he repeated. "And when we were talking about meeting her out of costume and throwing money at her, you didn't think to mention that?"

"Oh, busted!" Regent said.

Tattletale ignored him. "What, you don't think she was worth two thousand dollars? Because of her, the ABB lost its leader _twice_. The only cape they have left is Oni Lee, and he's going to be lounging around his mother's basement playing video games until someone _else_ tries to order him around, so we pretty much have the whole docks to ourselves."

At least, until the Empire Eighty-Eight tried to move in. And Skidmark's gang. Faultline might decide to settle down just out of spite. But still, for the time being the Undersiders had an opportunity to grow, or at least breathing room for a few days, and it was a toss of a coin to say which one they needed more.

"She's a hero," Grue said. "She'd have done that for free."

Tattletale rolled her eyes. "You're missing the big picture. Heck, you're even missing the little picture, and our valiant friend just demonstrated both. Let's say, hypothetically, that Bug had a psychotic bomb tinker exactly where she wanted her, but didn't know what to do with her after that. Because we're friends, I can tell her that the tinker selects her bombs with a built in HUD on her mask and detonates them with her toe rings, so if she smashes her mask and injects a neurotoxin into her left foot, the tinker's going to end up totally helpless."

Tattletale had not planned that eye thing, though. Eek.

"We can take that a step further," she continued. "Let's say a rival gang was planning on making a move, but we didn't want to risk dealing with them directly. So instead, I nudge everyone's favorite hero to do something brave and stupid, dragging half the Wards team along with her. The rival gang ends up neutered—figuratively this time, probably—and we don't even show up on the radar."

"Which is exactly what just happened," Grue said.

"Did it?" Tattletale said, sounding shocked. "Huh. Funny how that works."

"Gee, Tattle," Regent said. "If you wanted a pet Ward, you could have just asked. I would have been happy to get you one."

She rolled her eyes again. "Please. Did you not see the part where Gallant walked right by her and didn't notice a thing?"

"No. You were hogging the binoculars."

"They're not that expensive! Anyone can buy them!" She took a breath. "My point being, a meat puppet could not pass Master-Stranger protocols unless they were really into it, in which case they wouldn't need to be a meat puppet."

"Oh, right," Regent said, nodding. "Because they have 'emotions' and stuff."

"If we're not fighting anyone," Bitch growled, "I'm heading back."

"Yeah, yeah," Tattletale said. "Our work here is done."

"Not that we did anything," Regent said, sounding sullen. "We didn't even get to see fireworks. She promised fireworks, but there was only one, and we weren't close enough to even see that one."

Tattletale was about to climb up on Angelica with Regent when Grue gestured her toward Judas with him. Bitch always got her own dog because she liked dogs and hated people. Grue usually rode alone too because he was the biggest, so Tattletale often ended up with Regent, but apparently Grue had _words_ for her_._

She hung onto him as Judas jumped off the roof and onto the street below in a way that suggested that people with internal organs had better just learn to deal, and began trotting back to the hideout.

"Tattletale," he said. "When you plan something, I want to know about it _beforehand._"

"I'm always planning something."

"Then I always want to know about it. If it's just in your head, fine, keep it there, but as soon as you start acting on your ideas, you affect the whole team. You should have told us about Bug by Monday, and if you were in contact with her since then, you should have told us about that too."

"Well, a girl's gotta keep a few secrets."

"No! No secrets, no surprises. Not from us."

Tattletale gave an overly dramatic sigh. "Okay, fine, fine. I can tell you're loads of fun at parties."

"I'm 'fun' out of costume. Right now I'm working."

Tattletale smiled to herself. There were of course a few secrets that she couldn't help but keep, especially concerning their boss. She might be able to keep track of her own web of lies, but the web of lies that she might weave in an alternate timeline? That could get complicated, even for her.

Still, if Grue didn't trust her to be honest about lying to the team, then she'd just have to be dishonest about lying to them.

After they got home, Brian left for his apartment, Rachel saw to her dogs, and Alec booted up the Xbox. Lisa went to her room, lay down on her bed and awaited a phone call in five, four, three, two ...

Nothing.

Huh. Well, she was probably tired and had a lot on her mind, what with taking down her second villain this week, meeting some of the Wards, and tormenting herself over arbitrary guilt. Lisa thought about calling her, but the girl liked her space.

She decided to text her instead. _hey t glad you made it home ok_

Right. That didn't sound stalkerish or creepy at all. She deleted it and called Coil.

"Hey boss. How's the plan for world domination?"

"Tattletale. If this is about the bank documents, I'm still reviewing them."

"Oh, sure, take your time. Hey, you probably already know this, but Bakuda's been arrested."

There was a pause. Lisa smiled.

"I didn't know that, actually. Pity. She could have been useful. The havoc she could have wrought would have embarrassed the heroes greatly."

"Yeah, maybe, but she was a lousy neighbor."

"Did she come after you?"

"No, but we saw it go down. Two of the Wards, Gallant and Vista were there, as well as the new cape that's been running around controlling bugs." If Coil had split the timeline and had played the conversation differently, would Lisa have added anything else? Talking to him was tricky, but in a fun way like playing chess with yourself while blindfolded.

"I see," he said. "Well, that's unfortunate. This victory negates the defeat your team handed them yesterday."

It all came down to reputation. Coil wanted to destroy the heroes in the hearts and minds of the people of Brockton Bay, but he didn't want the Protectorate coming after him for revenge, so he pushed gangs like the E88 and the ABB to become more aggressive. He also wanted to take over the underworld without being _seen_ taking over the underworld. That's where the Undersiders came in.

"If you want us to fight the heroes again, all you have to do is make us an offer. Of course, it might be easier just to break Bakuda out of prison." Lisa paused. "I suppose the logical conclusion would be to hire us to break her out, but ..."

"Would you do it?"

"If the money was good enough, sure, but that would have to be a _lot_ of money. We kind of hate each other right now. Freeing her could be a peace offering, but a peace offering to who? To Lung, stuck in prison right now? To the ABB, with Oni Lee as their only cape?"

"That's assuming she'd be returning to the ABB."

"Where else would she go?" Lisa asked. "She's on strike two at least, and first degree murder draws way more heat than you'd want on your team, and we don't want her either. Again, if the money was good enough we'd do anything, but I don't know if even _you _have that much."

"I'm merely brainstorming. She could have been a valuable enemy, but perhaps she lacks the qualities necessary to be an ally. If the ABB is truly defeated, then you can expect the Empire to expand."

Such was the life of a super villain. If you defeat one enemy, another one will take its place before you have time to catch your breath.

"_Over_ expand?" Lisa suggested. "Bite off more than they can chew?"

Coil paused. "Perhaps. I will have to think about this. I will keep in touch."

Lisa wondered if Coil ever hired her to analyze information, then deleted that timeline so he wouldn't have to pay her. That irritated her because not only would that be a _total_ cheapskate move, but also because Coil would know what Lisa knew without Lisa knowing what Lisa knew, and if anyone had a right to know what Lisa knew, it was Lisa.

Shortly after Coil hung up, Taylor called.

"Hey, super hero. How's life saving the world?"

"Tiring. Lisa, I ... I've been thinking."

"You're not breaking up with me, are you?" Lisa asked in mock panic.

There was a pause. Silence often said the opposite of nothing.

"I hear you guys robbed a bank yesterday."

_Okay, not where I thought this conversation was headed._ She gauged Taylor's tone and mood. "Yeah. We really wanted to make the front page today, but the bank tried to sweep the heist under the rug and we ended up overshadowed by some missing kid. We walked away with forty K yesterday, and don't let the Bulletin tell you otherwise."

"I talked to her dad today."

Lisa frowned. _The bank's dad?_ "What?"

"The girl who went missing," Taylor said. "I talked to her dad. I think it's a thing that Wards do, visit victims of past crimes."

_That's what you want to talk about?_ Of course it was. Of course Taylor would care more about a missing person than a missing fortune, and would try to sweep a major accomplishment under the rug like it was something to be embarrassed about. She was exactly like heroes ... weren't.

"Yeah? What did he say?"

"He was talking to Gallant the whole time, and Gallant told him that the Protectorate was out of town that day and that the Wards couldn't come help because they were too busy fighting you."

There was a note of accusation in her tone. Not the drum solo of judgement or the entire orchestra of condemnation, just one note.

"So go on. What happened next?"

"Well, Gallant told him that the heroes would do everything they could to get his daughter back, but when I asked him later what that was, he admitted that it wasn't a lot."

"Uh-huh. So he just gave him some false hope."

"That's better than no hope. I guess." She didn't sound convinced. "That's what he said, at least."

"But is it? Let's play this out. In scenario one, Gallant tells the grieving father to keep his chin up and keep smiling because the heroes have everything under control. The trail goes cold, but while the heroes couldn't save the day, no one else did either, so the good guys break even. In scenario two, Gallant admits that the heroes have more important things to do than rescuing diminutive damsels in distress, like stopping dastardly villains from robbing massive, heartless corporations. So Dad feels miserable, sure, but then he starts looking into other options. Maybe he solves the mystery himself, or hires a private investigator. Heck, maybe he decides that you need a thief to catch a thief and goes to the villains for help, and maybe, just maybe, he gets her daughter back. Do you have any idea how disastrous that would be?"

"No. That doesn't sound bad at all."

"It would be horrible. If people start finding alternatives to super heroes, where would it end? Heroes need people who need them, because then those people will support them with tax dollars, charitable donations, and stroke their heroic egos. If people started solving their own problems instead of waiting for the United Military Complex of America to follow through on their empty promises, they'd start lobbying for budget cuts, and for career heroes throughout the U.S. and Canada, that would be Armageddon."

There was a pause. _No one who has a hero to save them ever becomes a cape._ That was a well documented fact. People with villains trying to torment them have trigger events all the time.

"That seems a bit convoluted. What was that razor theory? Olcam? Occam? I think Gallant just wanted to make him feel better."

"Of course he did," Lisa said. "I mean, it's not like _he_ writes the protocol for that sort of thing." Was she laying it on too thick? Maybe, but if Taylor was going to join the Wards, Lisa wanted her going in with her eyes open instead of content to follow orders to defend the status quo. "Or maybe I'm just terminally cynical. And I keep on interrupting you. Go on."

"Um, anyway, Gallant said that the reason the heroes can't do anything is because all their Thinkers join the PRT Think Tank, and they only get involved with Parahuman threats. So _I _thought, I don't really know what your powers are, but you always seem to know everything."

Lisa grinned. "Guilty, as charged." Lisa _didn't_ know everything, but she was great at seeming like she did. "So you want me on the case, do you? I hope you know the going rates for Thinker work."

She noticed that Taylor hadn't _actually_ asked for help. Just like when she had called about Bakuda, she hinted that she needed help and let the implication hang in the air. Bad experiences asking for help in the past?

"I ... don't."

"Oh, they're reasonable. Quite reasonable." _You'll owe me a favor. Even if I never ask for anything, you'll know I helped you, and you'll _want _to pay me back._ "So. What's the name of the missing kid?"

"Dinah Alcott. She was kidnapped from her home Thursday afternoon."

"I can't believe crooks are operating in broad daylight. What is this city coming to?" Taylor didn't laugh. Okay, the joke _was_ in pretty bad taste. "Did the family have any enemies? Was the kid acting weird?"

"Her uncle is the mayor, but that's it. She was having bad headaches too, which is why she was staying home."

"Headaches." Lisa got headaches when she used her powers too much. Sometimes it got so bad she couldn't stand up straight. "Anything else?"

"Her dad said that she made predictions sometimes, too. So I guess she was delirious?"

"Are you sure she didn't just run away?" Lisa asked, feeling a sense of déjà vu."

"I'm sure. Armed men broke into the house while the mom was there and dragged the girl off, kicking and screaming."

"_Oh._" It was _that_ kind of story. The déjà vu came back in full force. "It sounds like someone wanted a pet precog."

"No, they already looked into that. Her parents got her an MRI, and it came back negative."

An idea popped into her head. It was ... not a dumb idea, very clever actually, but it was a foolish one. She ran with it anyway. "Let me ask you a question. What do you know about our boss?"

There was a pause. "I remember you guys mentioned that he's half the reason you've been as successful as you've been so far. He also pays you two thousand dollars a month to stick together."

"Good memory. Now, what did we _not_ tell you? Come on, you're smart. Fill in the cracks. Why would someone want to fund a team of super villains?"

"I don't know. Maybe he helps you operate and takes a cut of whatever you steal?"

Lisa rolled her eyes. "If he paid us to pay him, we'd just cut him out and keep the money ourselves."

"Wait, it's like you're lawyers, isn't it? Only, you're not lawyers on retainer, you're villains on retainer. He doesn't need you all the time, but he pays you to be available for when he does."

"Ooh, now that's an interesting idea. Now, who knew that the Undersiders were going to rob a bank that day?"

"Your boss did."

"Robbing a bank is usually a pretty dumb idea, but fortunately the Protectorate was having a party at an out of town country club. Who knew where they would be?"

"The heroes did."

"During the robbery, every Ward but Shadow Stalker showed up to stop us, leaving virtually no one to deal with other threats. Who has the authority to send out all the reserves, assuming that they wouldn't need anyone hanging back, or, and I'm just throwing this out there, wanting to make sure they didn't?"

"The heroes."

"Them again? Okay, final question. Who is in a position to fudge a PRT MRI scan?"

"You're saying that your boss is one of the good guys?"

"Well, _good_ might not be the right term, but no. That's what _you're _saying. I'm just asking poignant questions." It was far more likely that Coil had a few well placed spies and a corrupt official or two in the PRT, but why waste good paranoia?

"Okay. But if your boss is behind all of this, why would you tell me?"

"Because he never told me. If you tell me a secret, I'll keep your secret, but if I figure it out on my own, I have to tell _someone_, don't I?"

"Is that how your powers work?"

"That's how _I_ work." She hadn't picked the name _Tattletale_ out of a hat. "As for compensation ..."

"I have about a thousand dollars left over from what you gave me for helping you with Lung. After I join the Wards, I'll get ... I don't know how much they offer."

"Eight bucks an hour."

"Really? I'd make that much at Fugly Bob's."

"You get another fifty grand a year, but you won't be able to touch it until you turn eighteen, and even then you have to use it for college before anything else. That's why it's called a trust fund, because they don't _trust _you with it. You might make more working as a rogue on the side being an exterminator or something, but the only way to make serious bank is villainy."

"That's not an option for me."

"Yeah I know. But if you can't pay me with money, I'll trade you information for information."

"You want me to spy for you?"

"Not on the heroes," Lisa said. "I wouldn't ask you to do that." It would be a bad idea to get Taylor in the habit of saying no. She considered asking her to spy on some of the other villain teams. If the Undersiders knew that the PRT was going to attack the Empire, they could take advantage of the information to hit the Empire somewhere else at the same time—or hit the PRT at the same time. She decided against it.

"If the boss really is a hero during his day job," Lisa said, "you'll be in a better position to find out than I am. You tell me what you find out about the big man, and I'll tell you what I find out about the little girl."

There was a pause. "Why would you want me to spy on your boss?"

_Because you're not going to find him. You might find an informant or two, but that's it. But you'll look. You'll ask questions. And whenever someone tells you to do something, you'll _think. _The worst thing a hero can do is follow orders blindly._

"Because if we're right about this, then he didn't just _hire_ us, he _used_ us, and being expendable is not a good career move for me. If I know who he is and what he's doing? He won't be able to afford to play both sides."

WWW

The next morning the alarm clock barely woke her. It wasn't that Taylor was exhausted from the night before; no matter how tired she was, she was always a light sleeper. She had to be, with dreams like hers.

No, the problem was that she was still deaf in one ear. She snapped her fingers on either side of her head to test it, and while her right ear was pretty much back to normal, her left ear couldn't hear a thing.

_Not the best way to start my first day as a Wards member, _she thought, getting out of bed and feeling wobbly. _I can't even walk in a straight line. _She remembered that the sense of balance was controlled by the inner ear, and when Bakuda's bomb had damaged her hearing, it must have wrecked her balance too. For some reason, her bugs were able to help with that, and when she had laced the walls, ceiling, and floor with her swarm, she felt more sure of where she was placing her feet.

And today she _would_ join the Wards. There were a thousand reasons not to, but if she put if off until tomorrow, she'd come up with a thousand more. Gallant had been nice to her—more than nice. Taylor had spent less time with Vista, but the girl seemed nice too. _And_ there was a chance that a criminal mastermind was pitting the heroes and the villains against each other in order to kidnap little girls, and Taylor wouldn't be able to find out more as a solo cape.

She felt better after she started her run. Her problem wasn't that she was tired, it was that she was _tense_, but running let it out. She felt more relaxed covered in sweat and panting heavily with sore legs than she ever did lying in bed dreading the next day.

After she got back, she showered, ate breakfast with her dad, and looked up Bakuda on the PHO message boards. She thought that the bomb Tinker might appreciate how her topic threads had exploded.

The first one was labeled, "Head Asplode," and talked about the people who'd had bombs implanted in their heads. Some of the commenters talked about their experience while others claimed that the people in the first group were making it up to look cool. Some were worried that Bakuda would set them off telepathically when she woke up (and theorized that she was kept perpetually sedated so that wouldn't happen), while others claimed that the bombs had an automatic countdown that would set them off today unless Bakuda was freed to reset the timer.

The biggest part of the thread was talking about getting the bombs out. Some people said that pulling the bombs out set them off, but that was only the first few times until the PRT doctors got the hang of it, and you really don't want to go to the ER or a private surgeon because they have no idea what they're doing. Others said that the PRT doctors will take the bombs out, but they'll put you in prison for being part of a gang. The thread devolved into a debate about whether the Hippocratic Oath allows your doctor to arrest you and what the legal definition of guilt by association was, and then devolved further still into childish name calling.

"Bakuda for the Birdcage" was the second thread that caught her eye, but it didn't have anything conclusive. You needed three strikes to be sent to the Birdcage, but no one knew what counted as a strike. Bakuda had held a college campus hostage before joining and then leading the ABB, so she was on at least two. Whether or not implanting bombs in the heads of hundreds of people, most of which did not explode, should count as one or two strikes was another debate the devolved into childish name calling.

Afterwards, she printed off the Wards application form and smuggled it into her backpack before her dad could see it. She wondered once more why she didn't just _tell _him what she was doing. He was bound to find out eventually, especially when she transferred to Arcadia, and for every day she hid the truth he would feel that much more betrayed when the truth came out.

"Hey, Taylor," he said as she passed by. "Heading out?"

"Yeah. I'm going to drop by the library, get a few books." She made a one-eighty turn so her good ear was towards him, even though that put her back to the door. Hopefully it didn't look too suspicious.

"What again?" Oh, right. She had used that exact same excuse the night before to cover up for her ride-along with Gallant. He smiled. "You are so much like your mother."

How could she even respond to that? She liked reading, and much of that was because of the times she spent in her mom's English class on campus. It was like peering into a new world, surrounded by people twice her age discussing Shakespeare and _Crime and Punishment_ while her fourth grade class was slogging along through _Wayside School is Falling Down_ and _Mr. Popper's Penguins._

"Try not to stay out so late again," he said. "Dangerous people come out at night."

"I have my pepper spray." _And a stun gun. And a baton. And superpowers. Also, they're villains, not vampires. They come out during the day, too._

"And they have bombs. I heard one last night. I don't mean I heard about it on the news, I heard the actual explosion."

Taylor blinked. "You did too?" _That was right in front of me._ That was why Taylor didn't want to tell him, for the same reason she kept the details vague about her bullies. He worried about her, and when he couldn't do anything to help, he worried even more. Gallant had talked to her the day before about false hope; _this_ was false peace. "I'll give you a call to let you know where I am if I end up staying out too late. I'm ... I'm also thinking about getting a part time job. You know, for after school."

"A job? Really?"

She forced a smile. It was technically true, but that only made it feel more deceptive than a flat out lie. "It might be nice to have some spending money, some work experience, and ... and to be around people I don't go to school with."

He considered that. He considered everything with his signature thoughtful seriousness, even jokes. That had only increased in January when he got a glimpse into the craptacular life of Taylor Hebert that she had never told him about.

"That sounds like it could be good for you," he decided. "What kind of job are you thinking about?"

_Part-time junior super hero._ "I don't know. A custodian or something." That had just popped into her head, but it was a pretty safe answer. If she said fast food, he'd want to go out to eat there to see her and wonder why she wasn't at work. The same was true for a job at the movie theatre.

Besides, how did that phrase go?

_Quis custodiet ipsos custodes._

It worked.

"Okay. Let me know if anything comes of it."

"I will. I'll be home in time for dinner if not sooner."

"Alright. I love you Taylor."

"I love you too, Dad."

WWW

After a long phone call with Armsmaster's secretary, Taylor made her way to the Protectorate Headquarters. It was a futuristic fortress on the water with a forcefield bubble around it and a forcefield road leading up to it. Taylor wasn't sure, but she suspected that the architect had been a huge fan of the _Jetsons_ cartoon growing up.

Still, it was magnificent. The heroes worked there, some of them lived there, and the building was designed to look like Brockton Bay's own personal Mount Olympus, then no one was going to argue with that _or_ with the missile defense system on the roof.

After Taylor got there, she ... waited. She arrived ten minutes ahead of schedule, but she ended up waiting half an hour after that.

Should she have come in costume? It would have been appropriate, as she was doing cape stuff, but the design was a bit too edgy for a hero, and the PHQ was _not_ a place where you wanted someone to call security on you. Besides, the idea of taking the bus and walking down the sidewalk _in costume_ was ridiculous. That's why the heroes got around in cars, motorcycles, or, in Vista's case, by violating the laws of physics. Heck, even the Undersiders had Hellhound's freaky monster dogs.

While she waited, she watched the capes come and leave. She recognized all of them, of course. Assault and Battery, walking side by side. Velocity blurred by. Miss Militia, with a squadron of PRT officers. Some of them glanced at her, as though wondering if she was lost. No sign of Armsmaster, though.

Finally, the receptionist called her name and a PRT officer escorted her through the door and down the hall to Armsmaster's workshop.

She didn't know how many people got to see Brockton Bay's top Tinker at work, but she probably would have appreciated it more if she understood anything she was looking at. There were gadgets strewn across the tables, shelves, and on the floor, and Armsmaster was sitting at a computer that looked like it had been turned inside out and Frankensteined with another computer.

"You may go," he said abruptly, glancing at them.

Taylor's escort turned and left, and she was left wondering if Armsmaster had been telling her to leave too.

"You've had a busy week, I'm told. I hear you've settled on the name 'Myriad.'"

"Gallant picked it out, and I haven't been able to come up with one I liked more." She hesitated, unslung her backpack, and fished out the Wards application form. "I decided to take you up on your suggestion to join the team. I was ... I was hoping you could sign it for me." She held out the form, and he waited just long enough to make her feel uncomfortable before taking it.

He set it on the table without looking at it. "I've been analyzing Bakuda's inventions, trying to disarm them and even reverse engineer a few. Do you know how she detonated her bombs?"

She shook her head. "I saw her set one off, but I didn't see her press a button or anything."

He cocked his head. "You don't know. Interesting."

For a moment he reminded her of her eighth grade math teacher, Mr. Harrison. He wasn't very good at explaining the concepts, and if you ever asked him for help with a problem, he would take a moment to rub your face in your own ignorance and relish his own superiority over the average thirteen-year-old.

He took two small rings on his desk and pushed them towards her. "She wore these on her toes. When she wanted to detonate a bomb, she selected it via the built in HUD in her mask and crossed her toes over each other. We might never have discovered this if we weren't treating a black widow spider bite on her foot. But you say you didn't know her detonation mechanism."

"I didn't. I had no idea until you told me."

"You're telling the truth." It was a statement. He had said the same thing in the same tone when she had told him that she wasn't a villain. She suspected that he might have a built in lie detector. "And yet, a potent neurotoxin would have been an ideal, if ruthless, tool to negate someone's ability to cross their toes. And then you smashed her mask immediately afterward."

What was she supposed to say? That a nearby supervillain that she had been hanging out with had given her a cryptic tip at just the right moment? Of course, if she was right about his lie detector, she couldn't tell him anything but the truth. Lying to the heroes was a bad habit to get into anyway.

She just needed to tell him the _best_ truth and hope it worked out. "Before I went after her, Gallant told me what to do during a hostage situation. We could either wait for her to get tired of killing people and try something else, or we could do something so horrible to her that no one who knew her would try to do that sort of thing again."

"So you bit her with a black widow and stuck a taser in her eye."

She nodded. In retrospect, going for the eye may have been a bit much.

"Myriad, or ..." he started.

"Taylor."

"Taylor, villains might skulk around in the shadows, but when you're a hero, everyone is watching. We have _rules_ here, protocols and standards. Any fight you go into should either be one you can win _without_ killing anyone, or against someone with a kill order. We do not tolerate cruelty for the sake of cruelty among our own any more than we tolerate it among the villains, and yet this is the second time this week you have sent someone to the ICU."

Taylor stared at him. "But ... but I caught the bad guy! Besides, she had a grenade launcher, henchmen pointing guns at my head, and over a hundred hostages. I wasn't in a _position_ to play nice!"

"You _put_ yourself in that position."

"What was I supposed to do?" she demanded. "Let people die?"

He didn't respond and let the silence linger long enough for it to dawn on her that she had just tried to tell the leader of the Brockton Bay Protectorate how to super hero. "Like I said, when you're a hero, everyone is watching, and they're only looking for mistakes. It's not enough to do less harm than good; you're expected to do no harm at all. I already stuck my neck out for you once when I took the fall for Lung. I'd be doing it again if I signed for you, so I need to ask you, are you willing to follow the rules?"

_The fall for Lung?_ That was supposed to be a favor to him. It was karmic in a way. Armsmaster had manipulated her into letting him take credit for Lung, and Taylor had let him take the credit so he'd owe her a favor. But the credit had turned into blame, and now she owed him a favor.

"If I can't follow the rules," Taylor said slowly, "I'll quit the team before I break them."

WWW

Taylor needed two signatures besides her own to join the Wards. The Wards program had grown out of the early sidekicks, and back then they were mostly orphans and wards of the state, hence the name. Apparently, being a super hero was easier without inconvenient questions like, "Your school called. Would you like to tell me why you didn't show up?" and, "Oh my goodness, what happened to your _arm_?"

That was why in place of a legal guardian signing for her, Taylor could ask a "respected professional" instead, and Armsmaster was one of the most respected professionals in the city.

The second one was potentially even harder. She had to sit through a session with a PRT therapist and convince her that she was hero material. What could Taylor even say? That she wanted to take on super villains because she couldn't handle high school? That she wanted to save the world because going on a murderous rampage through Winslow High seemed like too much trouble?

With a lie detector, from what she knew, you could get away with being _technically_ truthful, but would a professional therapist let her get away with all the stuff she was leaving out?

"Have a seat," Doctor Yamada said, "if you like. Make yourself comfortable."

Taylor sat down. The chair was soft, but not a couch like she had expected. "So, how do we do this?"

"We talk. You tell me what's bothering you, and I see if I can help in any way. We can start, if you like, by you telling me your name."

"Oh." She felt like an idiot. "Which one? My cape name, or ..."

"Whichever you prefer." Her voice was soothing, like listening to the ocean on a calm night. Taylor wondered if Yamada ever narrated audiobooks. "I'm under a strict code of confidentiality when it comes to secret identities. You can even make one up if it makes you feel comfortable."

Taylor considered that. "Are you usually here, or are we borrowing you from another city?"

"The PRT cycles through us on a regular basis," Yamada explained. "I live in Boston, but I work with young capes here, in New York, and even as far as Chicago. Doctor Richmond is the usual therapist for Brockton Bay, but she had to take time off."

Ah. If Yamada wasn't local, then Taylor would probably never see her again. That made things easier. "You can call me Taylor."

Yamada smiled. Taylor had seen that expression before on the faces of parents helping toddlers learn to walk. "Thank you for telling me, Taylor. With all the focus on secret identities, I understand that it can be hard to trust people."

She shrugged. "I've never been good at trusting people." She shook her head. "Well, not any more."

Crap. Why had she added that second part? Why had she even said the first part?

Yamada smiled at her the same darn smile. _Good job. Keep going. I believe in you._

"I ... I mean, it's great to have someone to trust. I used to. I had a friend growing up, just one. We did everything together, shared everything, and I never _needed_ anyone else. Then she ... changed. There was no warning, no sign, just one day she was my friend, and the next, she ... It was like a game to her, finding new ways to hurt me. I used to think she hated me for some reason I couldn't understand, but now I think she was just bored."

_Great job convincing the PRT therapist that I'm not a basket case of issues._

"Anyway, that was a long time ago," Taylor said. "Can we talk about something else?"

"We can talk about anything you wish to talk about."

"Well, that's vague. What do you need to know about me? I've never done a, uh, a psychiatric evaluation."

"The most important question, I would think, is why you want to join the Wards."

She shrugged. "They're a super hero team. I'm too young for the Protectorate and I can't keep a secret identity in the New Wave, so if I want to be a hero it's either the Wards or work solo. And if you work alone, you get picked off and no one comes to help."

"And why do you want to be a hero?"

Taylor fell silent for a moment. She'd been daydreaming about being a cape for months and _doing _it for a week, but what could she get out of being a hero that she couldn't get out of being a villain? A life outside of high school? An escape from the bullies? She could get that as a villain. The thrill? If she wanted thrills, she might get _more_ as a criminal. Fame? Fortune?

The chance to hurt people?

"I get bullied a lot at school," she said at last. "I don't know what it says about me that I felt better staring down a gun barrel last night than I ever had at Winslow, but it's true. There's only about three other girls who do it, but _everyone_ lets it happen. The other kids would rather watch than risk becoming a target, and the teachers ... I don't know. They just don't care? They don't want to be seen as the stern disciplinarian?

"It doesn't matter. Last January, one of them shoved me in my locker. A bullying cliche, I know, so she decided to spice it up. She filled it to the brim with used pads and tampons, and they must have been sitting there all Christmas break. I threw up as soon as I opened the door, and I spent what felt like the next _hour _locked in there, barely able to move, covered in blood, garbage, and my own vomit."

Why was she telling her this? Was she doing that self-sabotage thing again that Gallant had talked to her about? Trying to convince Yamada that she was too pathetic to be allowed anywhere near a super hero team? Well, she was almost done.

"Only one of the bullies actually did something, but there were hundreds of people who did _nothing._ It would have only taken one person. Anyone could have called a janitor to unlock the door and let me out or, or offered to testify, but they didn't." Damn it, she was still bitter after all this time. She had expected monsters to be cruel, but they could only get away with it because people were so indifferent. "I got powers that day, and I didn't want to be someone who would look the other way." _Not like they did._

Yamada nodded somberly. "Trigger events are half the reason the PRT employs so many therapists. It's not something that capes every completely leave behind."

Well. _That_ wasn't comforting. "I haven't really studied the scientifics behind parahumans. Or the psychologicals." If that was even the right term for it.

"That's quite alright." She gave Taylor a smile that seemed almost playful. "I'd feel rather useless if you had. Do you have any concerns about joining the Wards?"

_Enough to fill a book._ Where could she even begin? That she was terrible at working with people and was about to join a team? That she hated being in the spotlight and being a hero meant that everyone would be watching her, waiting for her to screw up?

Talking to the therapist made her feel _raw._ She didn't like it.

"What if I'm not good enough?" Gallant had been encouraging from start to finish, and even Glory Girl had seemed a little impressed with her, but Armsmaster's attitude seemed like it was, "Be perfect, or get out of the way."

"Would that be so bad?" Yamada asked. That surprised her. Taylor had expected some empty platitude. "Would you still want to be a hero even if it meant starting from the bottom, making mistakes, and learning over time? How long would you be willing to be a bad hero in order to become a good one?"

Taylor considered that. Of course she would _like_ to be exceptional from the start, but it would be naive to expect that. "Even if it means holding the team back?"

Her vanity, even the chance to say goodbye to Winslow High once and for all wouldn't be worth it if it meant getting someone killed.

"Everyone starts at the beginning, Taylor. We put heroes on a pedestal, so it's easy to get caught up with all the gilt and glitter, but when you cut all that away from the capes, what you have left is people. People with abilities, but people with fears, flaws, and insecurities. Like you."

"But that's worse." She laughed bitterly. "You do see how that's worse, don't you? I mean, the heroes are the ones fighting the Endbringers and keeping the Slaughterhouse Nine from running rampant—_more_ rampant—in the streets. Can you imagine how royally screwed we are if the people _saving the world_ are people like me?"

Yamada leaned forward, and if there hadn't been a coffee table between them she would have reached out and touched her. "Taylor, I meet with young heroes all over the the eastern United States, and I've come to know that the very best heroes are the ones who feel the most inadequate, and the ones who grow the most are the ones who realize how much they have to learn. I want you to know that you are stronger than you seem, smarter than you think, and braver than you believe."

Silence filled the room until Taylor broke it. "Did ... did you just quote Winnie the Pooh at me?"

Yamada leaned back in her chair. "Taylor, as your therapist I will never lie to you," she said, though Taylor thought that the woman's cheeks looked slightly pink. "Now let's talk about your childhood."

WWW

"Do you, Taylor Hubert, solemnly swear to uphold the laws and ordinances of the city of Brockton Bay and the surrounding areas, serve the public trust, and defend the people without fear, favor, or thought of personal safety; to pursue the guilty and protect the innocent, laying down your life if necessary in the cause of said duty, so help you God?"

"It's Hebert."

The deputy director blinked owlishly. He was a tall, skinny man, and Taylor got the impression that his mind was somewhere far more interesting than the PRT building and that his body wished it could be, too. "What?"

"Hebert. E-B-E. Not Hubert."

"Oh." Deputy Director Calvert scribbled a note on a piece of paper. "And it's Taylor with a Y?"

She nodded. "Yes sir."

"Mm-hm. Right then." He cleared his throat. "Do you, Taylor _Hebert_, solemnly swear to ... do all that?"

"I do."

"Then just sign here ... and here ... initial here, and the date is ... it's the sixteenth, and ... and you are hereby a member of the Brockton Bay Wards." He shook her hand.

Aegis strode forward. "I'll take it from here, Calvert." Aegis' powers made him invincible to the point where a bullet to the head was merely a cosmetic issue, but he wore body armor all the same. His costume was dark red with a white shield symbol on his chest.

"So, Taylor," Aegis said, leading her out of the room. "Gallant's told us a lot about you. The team's downstairs waiting to meet you."

"Should I be in costume?" She had it in her backpack; she could change in a bathroom if Aegis gave her a few minutes.

"If you like, but I wouldn't bother."

Taylor looked down at what she was wearing. Should she have gotten dressed up for this? She had left her home in what had felt comfortable: a baggy sweatshirt and a pair of jeans that were big enough to hide in. But now, on the verge of seeing Gallant, Vista, and the rest of the team—_her_ team—she almost wished she had worn one of the outfits Lisa had bought for her.

Almost.

"I think I should," she decided. If she had the choice between introducing herself as a creepy bug girl or an ugly, nerdy girl, she'd go creepy all the way. "Just give me two minutes."

It took longer than that. After stripping down in a bathroom stall, her costume decided to fight back. It was like putting on a wet swimsuit, and the more she tried to rush things, the longer it took. When she was finished, she realized two things.

The first was that while her clothes were drab and plain, her costume was literally homemade. Compared to the sleek designs the Wards had, her costume looked like she was trying to hard too hard to be edgy.

The second was that her lenses were still cracked. She hadn't had time to replace them since her fight with Bakuda, so she'd be meeting the team half blind as well as half deaf until she traded her mask for glasses.

She considered changing back into her civilian clothes, but then she'd have to explain to Aegis why she made him wait so long for nothing. She stepped out, keeping track of where the walls, floor, and people were with her bugs, pretending to see fine and hoping she wouldn't embarrass herself too much.

"You ready?" Aegis made no comment concerning her appearance. "Alright. Let's go."

He led her into an elevator. Instead of having a sliding metal door like a normal elevator, the doors had interlocking plates that folded in then back out. She would have thought it looked like CGI if she had seen it in a movie. They descended, and the Tinkertech machine moved so smoothly she wouldn't have been able to tell if it weren't for her bugs keeping track of their position.

"The PRT building is like an iceberg," Aegis explained. "Most of it is beneath the surface. The lowest and most secure level is the Wards base. On the second lowest level we have our very own parahuman containment facility. Gallant and Vista brought Bakuda in last night. They said you had something to do with that."

Taylor felt cold. "She's staying ... right above the Wards base?"

Aegis nodded. "In a cell right next to Lung. I can't imagine he's too happy with what she's done with his gang."

"They're _both_ above the base?" _Ohcrapohcrapohcrap._

"It's the safest place they could be until the trial. Feel free to check out the holding cells yourself if you're worried."

_Like hell I'll let Lung know where I am._ The elevator door unfolded itself again. Taylor didn't know if it was any more effective than a normal elevator or if it was just designed to look cool. _Still,_ she thought as she stepped out into a long hallway, _it does look cool._

At the end of the hall Aegis peered into a retinal scanner.

"Did it ..." Taylor started.

"Wait for it." The door slid open. "Timed delay," he explained. "Gives everyone a few seconds to put their masks on."

"Does that happen a lot?"

"The premium tour goes through here a few times a day."

Taylor groaned inwardly. _Imprisoned super villains and impending tourists. Why did I do this to myself?_

As soon as they stepped in through the door, Aegis took off his mask. "I'm Carlos, by the way. You can get into a tremendous amount of trouble revealing secret identities to the wrong people, but we're pretty casual about that sort of thing within the team." He had long black hair, tan skin, and Taylor couldn't tell if he was Cuban or Puerto Rican, but a body like his could make any face look good.

Taylor nodded and replaced her own mask with a pair of glasses. "Taylor," she said, then she remembered that Aegis—Carlos—already knew that.

On the other side of the door was a large room with a curved, dome-shaped ceiling. The walls were moveable, so the one large room was divided into several smaller ones: council rooms, bathrooms, and so forth.

Clockblocker stuck his head out through one of the doors, a black domino mask in place of the blank white one he usually wore. "New girl?" he asked.

"New girl," Carlos confirmed. "Myriad, Clockblocker. Clockblocker, Myriad."

"But around here people call me Dennis," he replied, taking off his mask. He had bright red hair and was more pretty than handsome. He made her think of what Emma would have looked like if she were a boy instead of a soulless she-devil.

"Taylor," she said.

"Yeah, I'm probably going to stick with 'new girl' for the next week at least." He turned back to the next room. "Yo! New girl's here!"

The next person to come out was a boy in a black buttoned-up shirt and slacks instead of a costume, followed by Vista, sans mask. The boy was tall, blonde, and had a chin that looked like it had been chiseled out of marble. "Myriad! I'm glad you made it official."

She hesitated. "Gallant?"

He smiled in a way that made her think of _The Great Gatsby._ "Dean right now, and this is Missy. I don't have a scheduled patrol, so there wasn't much point in putting on all that armor."

"He's on probation," Dennis explained, and he rolled his eyes. "His first day off in two years, and what does he do? He comes to work anyway, because he's _him_."

"I just thought she might appreciate a friendly face to welcome her onto the team," he said, and he was right. "Besides, Chris is on probation too, and he still came."

Probation? Taylor made a mental note to remember that—and to avoid bringing it up just in case it was embarrassing.

"Yeah, but that's just because the wifi's better, the TV's bigger, and no one gets on his case if he interferes with the nature of causality. Isn't that right, Chris? Chris? Hey!" He pulled out what looked like a miniature fire hydrant out of his utility belt and tossed it into the next room.

"_Ow!_"

Carlos stared at him. "Did you just throw a flash bomb at him?"

Dennis shrugged. "I didn't pull the pin."

Dean sighed. "Dennis has many good qualities. I hope one day you encounter some of them."

Dennis put a hand on Dean's shoulder. "One day. _One_ day you'll be irritated enough to insult me directly. Come on in. We can either do intros in the council room or the den, and the den has bean bag chairs."

It _did_ have nice chairs: three bean bags and two couches. Chris, whom Taylor guessed was Kid Win, was half-swallowed by one of the bags in front of a flat-screen TV nearly as wide as Taylor was tall, playing a game she didn't recognize. He pulled off his head phones and looked around.

"New girl?" he asked. Like Dean, Chris wasn't in costume either, and was wearing a tee-shirt and jeans.

"Taylor," she said.

"I recognize you from that Youtube video. With you on the team, that makes five of us."

"Seven," Dennis corrected. "Eight if you count Shadow Stalker. Don't know why you would, though."

Taylor frowned. "Why's that?" _What Youtube video?_

"You didn't hear? I thought the whole city knew by now. Shadow Stalker 'works alone.'" His tone suggested that that was a claim Shadow Stalker often made.

"She'd _prefer _to work alone," Carlos clarified. "Currently she's with ... Battery again?"

"Browbeat," Missy said. "Poor guy. They're on their way back right now."

"Browbeat," Dennis repeated. "I don't know how he puts up with her. Patience of Gandhi, I suppose, though I imagine that early onset schizophrenia doesn't hurt."

_Oh great,_ Taylor thought, groaning inwardly. A social hierarchy. Of _course_ there'd be one, even among heroes. Taylor was worried that she'd start out at the bottom of the ladder, but the bottom seemed to be already occupied by the former vigilante. Now if she wanted to be a part of the _in_ crowd, she just needed to exclude the _out_ crowd.

She'd seen it done countless times before.

"If that's how you talk about her when she's not here, is it any wonder why she'd rather be by herself?" Taylor demanded, a bit more harshly than she intended. "Because no one gossips so quietly that the person you're talking about can't catch on."

"_Thank_ you," Dean said. She wanted to smile at that. Of course _he'd _be decent about this sort of thing."

Dennis, fortunately, didn't seem too offended. "Hey, to be fair, I talk to her face the same way."

"No, you flirt with her to her face," Missy said.

"I do both," Dennis replied. "It's called multitasking." He paused. "Which would explain why it doesn't work."

_Oh._ It was one of _those_ relationships. She should have waited to figure out what was going on before she charged in with all her baggage.

"Hey Chris," Carlos said. "Didn't you say you were going to make some fireworks?"

"Oh right. Sorry. I was planning on throwing sparkbots together before she got here, but then I had an existential crisis and started playing video games instead." He looked at Taylor apologetically. "It hasn't been a good week for me."

"I asked Browbeat to get a cake on his way back," Missy said. "I, uh, didn't know what kind you wanted, Taylor, so I just asked him for one I wanted."

"Oh," Taylor said. "You guys didn't need to do anything. I'm just glad to be on the team."

"_Wrong!_" Dennis said. "Dean lets loose exclusively for birthdays, holidays, and new team members, so if we skipped your welcome party, he'd work nonstop until the Fourth of July. Besides, this the only way we can justify the _extensive_ hazing ritual you're about to face."

_Hazing ritual?_ Taylor would have preferred to skip the hazing _and_ the party, and just pretend like she'd been on the team the whole time.

"Don't worry," Dean said. "He's making it up. No one goes through hazing when they join the Wards." He sounded like he was talking to Dennis as much as he was talking to her.

"_I _did," Dennis said. "It's only fair."

"No, that was a disciplinary review and a meeting with Glenn Chambers about your image."

"Doesn't everyone have to do that?"

Dean shrugged. "I didn't."

"Huh. Go figure. It's been only a thousand years and knights in shining armor are still in style."

Missy nodded. "It's true."

_Old jokes,_ Taylor thought. _As old and familiar as my morning run. _She found herself feeling both jealous and excluded from the group, which was silly in its own way. She turned to Chris, still in his bean bag like an egg in a nest, and tried to change the subject.

"What game are you playing?"

"_Legend of the Last Slaughter._ Do you play?"

"I haven't played that game." Or any game. Her family had never owned a gaming console, and she preferred reading anyway.

"Basically you fight the Slaghterhouse Nine. Or at least the two-thousand-and-five version of the Nine. Some of those guys last as long as a jug of milk."

Taylor scanned the game collection. It was like looking at someone's bookshelf in a way—a means of getting to know someone without actually talking to them. Most of the games looked like they were in the same series: _Legend of the Last Slaughter, Legend: Beyond the End, Legend and the Wakened Sleeper,_ and at the very bottom ...

"_Legends of Love?_"

"Never played it," Chris said quickly.

"What's it about?"

"Don't know. Never played it."

Taylor pulled it out and glanced at the back. "'Romance world-famous heroes like Eidolon, Myrdin, Chevalier, and more?'"

"It came with the bundle," Chris said. Behind him, Dennis struggled not to laugh.

"_But_, if you complete all three core endings and input a code you get from beating _The Last Slaughter_, you unlock a secret ending where you bring Hero back to life via time travel." He hesitated. "At least, that's what I've read online. I don't really play dating sims. Um, so you control bugs."

Taylor blinked at the non sequitur. "Yes?'

"And you beat Bakuda."

"Uh-huh." _Barely._ It was more luck than anything else.

"So, how? I mean, I saw the Youtube video, but it just shows Bakuda monologuing for forever and a half, and then you hit her in the face."

Taylor stopped. "Youtube video?"

"Yep," Dennis said. "So, imagine that someone planted a bomb in your head, and the maniac with the trigger gets everyone together for a public execution. What do you do? The answer, obviously, is take out your phone and film the whole thing, because anonymous internet likes require, nay, they _demand_ that level of dedication. Wanna see it?"

Yes, after she got home. Watching it with the Wards would remind them that she had tasered someone in the eye and could lead to awkward questions about Lisa's text message. "Not really," she said, feigning nonchalance. "I mean, I was there, so ... about your question, Chris, I had some spiders crawl up everyone's guns and gum them up, and ... that's about it."

Chris frowned thoughtfully, then grabbed a notebook off a nearby desk and began scribbling something down.

"What?" Taylor asked. She looked around at the others. "What?"

"Hold on," Chris said. "I just had an idea."

"Ooh, what're you making?" Dennis asked. "A gun that shoots spiders at people? Because that would be hilarious as long as you used it on people who aren't me, and even that would be funny in hindsight."

Chris rolled his eyes. "No, I'm _not_ making a spider gun. With Myriad on the team, that would be redundant, and Miss Piggy would probably classify it as psychological warfare, confiscate it, and give me _another_ week on probation."

_There's some history here that I'm missing._

A bell rang overhead before she could ask about it, making Taylor jump. "What was that?"

"Someone's at the door," Carlos said. "Masks on, everyone."

It was a routine procedure for them, pulling masks out from their pockets or nearby drawers, but Taylor felt a moment of panic. Where had she put her mask? Oh, right, it was in her backpack.

"Hurry up!" Dennis shouted. "The tour will be here in two seconds, and they'll all have cameras! One second! There goes your secret identity!"

"Stop hazing her," Carlos said. "We all know it's just Browbeat and Shadow Stalker."

Sure enough, Shadow Stalker in a black cloak and black metallic mask came in through the door followed by someone with the body of a Greek god on steroids in a blue, diamond patterned costume.

"Sup, losers," Shadow Stalker said casually. "Oh, God, there's more of you."

"Did you guys get the cake?" Missy asked.

"We did," Browbeat said slowly. "But Shadow Stalker threw it at someone on the way back."

"_You monster!"_

"Okay, first of all, squirt," Shadow Stalker said, "I'm no one's delivery girl. Second of all, paparazzi don't have human rights. Third of all ..." She gestured towards the younger girl. "Aren't you fat enough already?"

_Ah._ Denis' comments about the girl made sense now. Taylor undid the straps of her mask to put her glasses back on so she could see if Browbeat was wearing body armor or _spandex_.

Carlos sighed. "Couldn't you pretend to be civil for one day?"

"Probably, but why would I ... _no._ No _freakin'_ way. _Hell_ no."

Taylor blinked. "What?"

"You two know each other," Dean said, sounding surprised and more than a little wary.

Shadow Stalker slid her mask off her face, and _Sophia Hess_ sneered at her. "Welcome to the goddamn team, freak."

WWW

A/n So. Stuff happened. First impressions are extra fun when they're misleading. I imagine that Coil is the kind of guy who wouldn't just invent an alter ego that would pass inspection, but pretend to be someone so unexceptional and forgettable in every way that he wouldn't be inspected in the first place. Kid Win, well, like he said, he's not having a good week. He nearly killed himself on prescription medicine to make the greatest gun of all time, then got the power source confiscated and got put on probation after failing to stop a bank robbery. Fortunately, he has video games, the best therapy science has to offer. (Sorry Yamada, you just can't compete with technology.)

Shadow Stalker's first impression isn't misleading at all. She's upfront about who she is as a person.

If you feel like any of the characters are misrepresented, let me know. It's hard to cram so many people into one scene, so some of them are going to drift into the background, but more than that, most of their character development occurred after Leviathan.

Anyway, thank you for the incredibly supportive reviews. You guys are amazing.


	7. Chapter 7

The Other Way

Chapter Seven

_Sophia Hess is Shadow Stalker._

There were probably noises in the room, but Taylor heard only those five words in her head again and again, echoing within her skull.

Sophia Hess was in the Wards. _Hero_.

_I spent the last three months dreaming about becoming a cape to get away from you, and you've been here waiting for me this whole time._

She felt like her dream had betrayed her, the heroes had betrayed her, the world had betrayed her. But underneath it all, in the deepest, darkest corner of her mind, she felt ... laughter. She had felt optimistic, hopeful even, and the world laughed at her.

Of course. _Of course_ she'd be here. Every time Taylor had found a refuge, a safe haven, an escape, the bullies would always find her.

She couldn't run.

She couldn't hide.

That only left ...

Someone put a hand on her shoulder, jolting her back to reality with Sophia's sneering face in front of her instead of just in her head. Below that sneer, the girl's jugular vein throbbed invitingly.

Taylor lunged at her, wanting to hurt her no matter the cost, but Sophia ... dissipated, turning into a shadow that Taylor passed through. Now behind her, Sophia grabbed her arm, twisted it behind her back, and slapped her into a wall.

Of course. She wasn't just fighting Sophia Hess, she was up against Shadow Stalker. _But you're not dealing with Taylor Hebert anymore, either._

Shadow Stalker leaned in close and whispered something in her left ear, but between her partial deafness and the other noises in the room, Myriad had no idea what she said. She couldn't bring herself to care. She was too busy focusing on her bugs.

There weren't many here. The Wards HQ was clean, and she didn't want to introduce herself to the other heroes looking like one of the plagues of Egypt, but even a small amount of bugs hiding in cracks and corners, in vents and under rugs meant hundreds.

She didn't have anything that could sting and only a few bugs that could bite, but everything that could fly swarmed Shadow Stalker's face, covering her eyes and squirming into her mouth. Shadow Stalker spat and stepped back, loosening her grip on Myriad's arm enough for her to pull free and slam her elbow into Shadow Stalker's face.

Shadow Stalker stumbled backwards, stunned, and Myriad pressed the attack, not wanting to find out what would happen if she lost the initiative. She pulled her stun gun out from its compartment on her back, and two things happened at once.

The first was that Shadow Stalker went into her shadow state, becoming a black, vaporous form that Myriad's bugs passed through.

The second was Aegis. He flew through Shadow Stalker's incorporeal form and tackled Myriad to the ground. She struggled to break free, swarmed him with bugs, and even tasered him once (mostly) on accident, but for all her effort, he picked her up like she was nothing more than a child and carried her out of the room. 

WWW

"So," Robert said, taking off his Browbeat mask. "What just happened?"

"New girl recognized Sophia from her civ life and tried to claw her eyes out," Dennis explained.

Robert considered that for a moment, then nodded. "Makes sense."

"And what's the deal, Dean?" Dennis said, turning on his friend. "When I asked you about the new cape you were recruiting, you told me she was crazy hot, not crazy."

"I didn't say that at all," Dean said. "All I said was that I thought you'd like her."

"_Implying _..."

Dean turned to Sophia, ignoring him. "Sorry. If I had known that you two knew each other, I would have warned you both. Are you going to be okay with this?"

Sophia ran her tongue along her busted lip. Enjoying the taste of her own blood wasn't the creepiest thing about her, but there was stiff competition. "My shift is over and I'm not staying for the party. I'm out of here."

"That's great," Dennis said with a smile. "I love to see you go _and _watch you leave, so this works out really well for me."

Sophia flipped him off as she left, which Dennis took to mean that she was fine.

"So what's going to happen to Taylor?" Missy asked.

"That depends," Dean answered. "Fighting with a teammate is always a serious issue, but it's her first day and we don't know about her specific circumstances. On the other hand, if it turns out that Taylor knew about Sophia's vulnerability to electricity when she tried to tase her, then it's suddenly an issue of attempted murder instead of assault."

"Oof," Missy said. "I guess I should have tried to separate them."

"Don't blame yourself. I was the only one who had any warning about what she was going to do, so if anyone is to blame, it's me."

Dennis rolled his eyes at that. The only person who ever blamed Dean for anything was Dean. You could step on his foot and he's apologize for being in your way. "You're worrying too much. Carlos is just going to yell at her for hitting Sophia—and let's face it, we've all wanted to do that at some point."

"Not all of us," Dean said.

"Besides you, then. Anyway, the only way it's going to escalate beyond that is if Sophia drags the issue to Piggy, and she never does that."

"No," Missy said. "She prefers to deal with problems on her own."

Oh. Right. The only thing worse than a problem was one that Shadow Stalker had "solved."

"I'm going to check on Carlos and Taylor," Dean said, thinking on the same wavelength. "You guys wait here until I get back." 

WWW

"Alright. First you're going to—"

"—can't believe this! She's a complete—"

"—calm the hell down, and then—"

"—_monster_! For two freaking years she—"

"—tell me what's going on—"

"—unending hell! And then I find—"

"—from the beginning!"

Taylor stopped, half from Carlos slowly losing his temper and half from the fact that she was out of breath. They were in a bedroom, but not one that looked like it had been lived in. One of the spares?

"Sophia Hess," she said slowly, "is Shadow Stalker."

Carlos nodded. "Yes?"

"Shadow Stalker," she continued, "is a hero."

"... and?"

"Do you not see the contradiction here? She sent me to the goddamn hospital as a joke, and—and she's been one of you this whole time!" One of you. It struck her that the Wards program worked with the schools, so Principal Blackwell and probably every teacher at Winslow knew who Sophia was. They knew what she pretended to be, saw what she did every day, and they did not care.

Or maybe ... maybe they were doing exactly what they were told to.

Dean knocked on the door and stuck his head in. "Is everything okay in here?"

"So far," Carlos said, "but we're just getting started. Taylor here is accusing Sophia of some sort of crime. Come in."

"What was it?" Dean asked, closing the door behind him.

It? Taylor almost laughed. As though it was only one crime, and not a year and a half of abuse. At the moment, she hated Dean almost as much as she hated Sophia._ If anyone should have seen what she was, it was you._

Maybe Dean _had _seen what kind of monster Sophia was. Maybe they all did._ Does anyone care?_

"It," she spat, "could fill several books." She _had _filled several books, keeping track of every cruelty since the beginning of her sophomore year, for all the good it would do. "Assault, battery, theft, vandalism, a load of other crap that I don't know the legal terms for."

She wondered if Emma knew. It made sense. Even when they were friends, Emma was full of shallow vanity that her amateur modeling job did nothing to curb. If she had met a super hero while Taylor was at nature camp—no, not a hero. A cape. Celebrity law enforcement was a more apt term. If Emma had met a celebrity that summer, of course she would have turned against her and let Sophia remake her. If that was the case, then Sophia Hess was single-handedly responsible for ruining Taylor's life.

"It doesn't matter," she said. "If Sophia's on the team, then I sure as hell am not. It was nice meeting you all, but I quit." She had been sworn in about half an hour ago. This was probably some sort of record.

Dean stood in the doorway, blocking her exit. "Hold on. If you've seen her break parole, we need to know about it."

"No!" Taylor barked. "You don't get to talk. You always know exactly the right thing to say, and I do not need that right now!" She hesitated. "Wait, parole?" She turned back to Carlos. "What is she on parole for? Did she kill someone?"

"No," Carlos said. "We got him to the hospital in time." He looked away, as though realizing that he probably shouldn't have said that.

Taylor's jaw dropped. "So you knew she was a violent psychopath, but you still let her run loose?" She had left one of her bugs on Sophia's cape to keep track of her. The cape was currently lying on the floor in another room with the rest of her costume, so wherever Sophia was, she was naked. Or, more likely, wearing something else.

"We don't let her run loose. She's restricted to tranquilizer ammunition and she's not allowed to patrol on her own."

"So you know she's messed up enough to keep an eye on her in costume, but you just _assume _she'll behave the rest of the time just because she's not wearing a mask?" Taylor shook her head. She was angry at them, but she was angry at herself too. Against common sense and personal experience, she had decided to trust people, and why? Because they called themselves heroes? Anyone could do that, and now Taylor had outed herself to the last person she would ever have wanted to know about her powers. "Whatever. That's your problem. Deal with it for once."

Or don't.

_And if you don't ..._

_Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?_

_I'll custodiet the heck out of you custodes._

She turned to leave. Dean stepped out of her way for her to open the door—and destroyed her life in seven words.

"If you back down, Taylor, she wins."

Taylor froze, her hand on the latch, and at that moment she hated him as much as she hated anyone in her life. Because her last pride was that, even if she didn't fight back against the bullies, she told herself that at least she didn't back down. Because becoming a cape had never been about stepping up, but about running away. And, most of all, because he was right.

Dammit all, he was _right_.

She would never forgive him for that. 

WWW

"Well, that could have gone better."

Dean shook his head after Taylor left. "No, I don't think it could have. You didn't see it, Carlos. It was like her head burst into flames as soon as Shadow Stalker took her mask off. I've never seen anything like it."

"And how was Sophia feeling during all this?"

"Sophia was ..." Sophia was unrestrained by nature, which made her easy to predict. Most of the time. "At first she was annoyed, but after Taylor attacked her, she seemed ... pleased? Relieved? Like she had wanted something for a long time and finally gotten it."

Carlos frowned. "So this is bad for Taylor, but good for her?"

"Unlikely. The sort of things Sophia wants ..."

"Ah."

"They usually aren't what she needs."

The previous Thursday, Shadow Stalker had been the only member of the team who hadn't fought the Undersiders during the bank robbery, and had been in a foul mood ever since. Well, a fouler mood. Officially Winslow High was too far away for her to arrive in time, but the truth was that she couldn't be trusted to work with the team when her nemesis Grue was involved, and she hadn't forgiven the team for holding her back. Now with this ...

"I'm not good at this," Carlos said abruptly. "I'm a soldier, not a leader."

"You lead by example."

"That's not leadership. I can fight. I can take a hit. But the rousing speeches, reading people ... you'll be better at this than I ever was."

Dean shook his head. "You're the hero. You saved Sophia's life when everyone else was starting to figure out what was going on. I'm just naturally manipulative." If he could have chosen his powers, he would have chosen something more physical, so he could stand against the monsters like King Arthur's knights, whom he had idolized as a child, or Chevalier, whom he had idolized as a slightly older child. But his father was the one paying for everything, so in the end Mr. Stansfield had chosen his powers.

"So what do we need to do about this? Besides make sure they never patrol together."

"Put me with Shadow Stalker tomorrow on her next patrol." His probation was only for one day, and was somewhere between a warning and a slap on the wrist. "As for Taylor ... I don't know. She needs the Wards more than she knows. In a few months, the team will mean as much to her as it does to Missy, but until she gets used to it ..." He shook his head, trying to recall every fact he could about the girl. "Maybe direct her toward some sort of legal recourse against Sophia? That should take a while, and give her time to cool." 

WWW

Emily Piggot reached for her cup of coffee, but found the mug empty. Distressing, but not worth getting up for. She drank coffee for the rhythm of putting something in her mouth more than she needed the caffeine. She turned back to the report on her computer screen when she heard a knock on her door.

She ignored it. If there were an emergency, no one would wait to knock, and if it were important, it would be on her schedule or someone would have called ahead. She waited for the annoyance to go away and leave her to her job.

Instead, the annoyance opened the door and stepped into her office. It was a cape, female, wearing a black and grey costume. She was new, but the fact that she barged into Piggot's office was proof enough of that.

"And you are?" She knew, of course, but the moment you started remembering people's names they started feeling important, and capes had enough self-importance already.

"Myriad. I joined the Wards today. I was talking to the education lady, Mrs. Paulson, about how the schools and the Wards Program work together, and she said I should talk to you."

"I see." She focused on her computer, keeping her expression neutral. _One job_, she thought. _You had one job, Paulson. Deal with the powered teenagers, and you can't even do that._ She had more important things to deal with, such as the fallout from the Bakuda situation. One might think that villains would be _less _trouble after being put in a cage. Over a hundred people needed brain surgery and bomb disposal, and then Gallant had offered the PRT's medical professionals to all of Bakuda's victims, which the PRT was in no way capable of accommodating under such short notice. The boy couldn't help but make grand, heroic, and ultimately counterproductive gestures, not understanding that bad help was actually worse than no help. Bad help gave people something to complain about while no help encouraged them to deal with problems on their own.

"The Wards Program encourages the schools to be lenient on the Wards," Myriad said. "Too lenient. It's too easy for a Ward to take advantage of the system."

Piggot raised an eyebrow at that, but she didn't buy it. Heroes often talked about their ideals like they were reading a script (one that Piggot herself sometimes helped write), but they hid behind those ideals like they hid behind people. Myriad wouldn't have brought up leniency unless it inconvenienced her.

"Which school do you go to?"

Myriad hesitated, caught off guard. "Winslow High."

Winslow? Did they have any capes at Winslow? She typed the name into her computer, and Shadow Stalker's file came up. Ah. That clarified things. "I take it you've met Sophia Hess before today."

The girl's mask hid her face, but Piggot had years of experience reading body language, and Myriad's clenched fists weren't subtle. "She's a _monster_. If you knew what sort of sort of crap she pulls when your people aren't watching, you wouldn't let her get away with calling herself a hero."

_All capes are monsters_, Piggot thought to herself. _Some monsters are useful._ She pulled up Myriad's file to see what she was dealing with. The girl had been sworn in literally that day, so it was short. Arthropodokinesis. Not exactly the most marketable power, but Piggot would find a use for her, assuming she was willing to fall into line. Meanwhile, Shadow Stalker was on probation, which meant Piggot could send her to prison if she misbehaved instead of just firing her.

"Acerbic, abrasive, narcissistic, a strong tendency toward violence, and an overwhelming sense of entitlement," Piggot said. Most capes were like that, to one degree or another. Some controlled it better, others hid it better, but it was there in all of them. "We are _always _watching."

Myriad stared at her for a long moment, long enough for Piggot to reopen the report about Bakuda's remaining victims. Hadn't Myriad been involved with that? Yes, but that was only mentioned in Bakuda's file, not Myriad's. It was a devil keeping track of everything.

"You are, aren't you?" Myriad said. "You're watching, you just don't care. That's even worse!"

The girl was becoming irritating. Piggot didn't like capes and she didn't like children; putting them together was her personal hell. "We care about issues far more important than you can comprehend."

That was the thing about children; they expected the world to revolve around them. They assumed they lived in a world where they mattered when they were objectively expendable. Piggot herself used to think that way when she was young and naive. The capes themselves taught her how little she mattered in the end as they left her team to die while they escaped. She took some solace from the fact that even the individual capes mattered little compared to the system. The PRT chewed up capes and spat them out just like it did with the non powered officers, all for a good that was greater than any of them. All that mattered was that the system as a whole kept going.

And for that system to keep going, the people in it, parahuman and normal alike, had to do their jobs, and Piggot needed to get back to hers.

"Let's wrap this up, shall we? Has Sophia Hess killed anyone?"

"No, but—"

"Has she assaulted civilians with parahuman abilities?"

"I don't—"

"Then she is outside my concern. If you have a problem with her as a teammate, speak with Aegis. If you have a problem with her as a classmate, speak with your principal. If you have a problem with her out of school and out of costume, go to the police or, better yet, file a report to her parole officer. Hess has a hearing in June if you would like to present your evidence to people forced to listen to you. But whatever you do, _stop wasting my time_."

Myriad remained there. "This isn't about Shadow Stalker. This is about the system that enabled her. You know she's violent. You know she's cruel. For all I know you know she sent me to the hospital a few months ago because she thought it would be funny. She does what she does because she knows what she can get away with. You give her license, she becomes licentious. That has to change."

Piggot gave her a cold look. She had lost everything to her job, working for the PRT, and now this ignorant cape on her first day here thought she could tell her how to run things. She knew better than to rise to the obvious bait, but ... but right now she simply wanted to. Besides, she only had one chance to make a first impression. If she did it right, she'd never have to make a second one.

"Alright," she said, leaning back in her chair. "Let's play this out. You're in charge of several teams of heroes. What do you do?"

"I ... I hold them to a higher standard. Gallant told me that people need heroes to believe in, but that doesn't mean anything unless the heroes are worth believing in in the first place."

"So no special treatment. At the end of the day, the heroes get a paycheck, and that's it. But they decide that if they're not going to be treated like heroes, they're not going to be heroes. They quit or you fire them, one by one. Some become rogues, others become villains. The heroes that remain aren't sufficient to maintain order and are eventually pulled to places where they can make a difference, abandoning everyone left behind to the whims of monsters. Congratulations, Myriad. You stuck to your ideals, to your self-righteous indignation, and let countless people die."

"That ... that might not happen," she said, but she sounded unsure.

"Gary, Indiana; Gallup, New Mexico; Pueblo, Colorado," Piggot said, listing off just a few of the HOSV's in the United States alone. "It's happened before. Either you refuse to bend until you break, or you focus on the one thing that matters. If you want fame, become a hero. If you want fortune, become a villain. If you want to break the rules, become a villain. If you don't want the rules to apply to you, become a hero."

Myriad tilted her head slowly, thoughtfully. "You don't believe in them. You work with heroes, but you don't believe in them."

Piggot did much worse than that. She preached capes, she was a false priestess in the church of capes. She was the reason people all over the city hero-worshiped super-powered, charismatic lunatics. She was great at her job. It came from her limitless capacity for hypocrisy.

"Of course I don't," she said. "I _know _you." She glanced at the clock. It was getting late, and she was wasting time. "Back to the matter at hand, Shadow Stalker. If her arrangement is giving her an unfair advantage over you, then you may have the same set of privileges. Face her on equal ground. That should satisfy you, I think."

No one wanted injustice, at least, not as long as was against them. Injustice in one's favor, however, was always somehow _earned_.

"No." The word came out sharp and quick. Myriad paused before continuing, as though surprised herself. "No. When I'm not in costume, I want to be treated like everyone else."

Piggot paused and looked up at her, studying her for the first time since she came into the room, because this was the first time that the girl seemed worth studying. "Is that so. We shall see. Now go away. I have work."

Myriad took the hint and turned to leave, though it was far past a hint at this point. Piggot waited until she was at the door to interrupt her.

"Oh, and Myriad? I do not have an open door policy. In the future, schedule an appointment with my secretary before coming to see me. Or better yet, solve the problem on your own." 

WWW

"So I'm thinking ..."

"Uh-huh."

"First of all, this whole thing is B.S. And you know it's B.S."

"You could argue that."

"I mean, all three at once? In the same country? At this point, we should just let them have it and move to Canada. I mean, screw America! I choose life!"

Chris winced. "You really don't want to let Miss Militia hear you talk like that. She doesn't wear stars and stripes on her costume for nothing."

"But seriously, all three?" Taylor squeezed the game controller in her hand as she glared at the screen. "Behemoth is in Houston, Leviathan's in Philadelphia, and Simurgh is in Chicago. What gives? I mean, I can't be everywhere, can I?"

"Nope," Chris said. "You have to choose one."

She scowled. _I hate this game._ But she wasn't cleared for active duty yet—_bullcrap_—and the only Ward left at the HQ was Chris. After dealing with Piggot and finding everything she had ever hated about adult supervision and government oversight, she had asked Chris how he dealt with feeling royally pissed at the world. Que _Legends of Love._ So far it wasn't working.

"The biggest city is ... Chicago or Houston? They're about the same, aren't they?"

"About."

"But Chicago could be quarantined no matter what. Simurgh protocols and all, like with what happened in Madison, so Chicago's gone. Though Houston isn't going to be that much better with all the nuclear fallout. Honestly if I'm going to cut my losses, I might want to just fly over to Philadelphia."

"Think less about the cities," Chris said, "and more about the other heroes in the cities. Namely the three love interests."

"Because they're staying there no matter what."

"Exactly. They're going down with the ship."

Taylor couldn't blame them for that. The whole thing was a hopeless mess, and when you were in a hopeless mess, the only thing you could do was decide where to take a stand. Besides, they were video game characters in a dating sim. They had a lot more anatomy than autonomy.

"Well, then obviously Philadelphia is out of the question. Legend can fly but Chevalier can't, so he'd only slow me down." Taylor chewed on her lip. "I'm going to be honest, I really don't understand Myrddin's powers that well, but at least he can fly. And do magic, apparently. Dimensional pockets or something. But Eidolon can do everything, so he's obviously the best choice. Right?"

Chris hesitated. "Well, I haven't actually played this game before."

"You may have mentioned that, yes."

"But you're over analyzing everything. I don't know if you want me to spoil the final chapter—"

"Yes. I'm not here for the plot twists, I'm here to win."

"Then keep in mind that this is a _dating sim_. You've been exploring the different romantic possibilities, but now it's the time to commit. No, it's the time to see if you have committed. You're going to abandon two people to die, and if you haven't maxed out the affection meter for the third one, he's going to die too. That's what Legends of Love is all about. Either you love your friends enough to save one of them—_just _one—or you watch the world end."

They stared at the television screen in silence, the choice left unchosen.

"This game is messed up," Taylor said.

"Absolutely."

"Did I max out anyone's affection meter?"

"Did you get a gratuitous shower scene back in chapter four?"

"No."

"Tough luck. Really it's next to impossible without having an open walkthrough in front of you the whole time."

Taylor sighed, got up off the bean bag (a more challenging seat to escape from had never been invented), and turned off the console. So far, her first full day as a Ward had been uneventful. Before going on patrol, she needed to finish reading the handbook of regulations that she had to live by, and some of the PRT experts had wanted to test her powers. Most of those tests had involved feeding cockroaches narcotics. The only productive thing she had done that entire day was replace the broken lenses of her costume, so yay, she could see again. She was still half deaf, but she barely noticed.

Tomorrow was her last day at Winslow.

"Hey, you go to Arcadia, don't you?"

He nodded. "We all do, almost. Missy's still in middle school and Sophia's in ... well, you know about her."

Oh, didn't she _just_. "What's it like there?"

He shrugged. "It's a school. There's a Faraday cage to block cell reception, which is kind of fun. When I first started going there, I began working on a Faraday bypass to shield the phone signal, but I never finished it. They got a work-study program with everyone leaving at odd hours to do internships and shadowing professionals, but that's just to cover us when we need to leave. Honestly I don't think I've ever stayed a full day, just because the PRT tutors explain things better than the teachers do, and I need more time to Tinker around in my workshop. Um, I actually do that a lot, I've just ... hit a block recently. What's Winslow like?"

"It's a ghetto school," she replied. "Half the kids are part of some gang or another, and you have to ignore the people selling drugs in the bathroom because they carry knives too and they don't like you looking at them. My ninth grade biology teacher got stabbed last year, but I hear he ... lived. Probably."

"Yikes. What does Sophia do?"

Taylor tensed and looked away. "Anything she can get away with."

"Like what?"

"Oh, you know, theft, vandalism, harassment. As long as she's not actively stabbing someone, she can get away with quite a bit." _She pulled my hair back so hard it hurt, shoved me in, and locked the door behind me._

"Oh," he said. "That's uh ... huh. I kind of figured that if there were so many gangs there ... I mean, she's always so into beating up criminals in costume, so I figured ..."

"What?" she snapped. "That she was deeply passionate about justice?"

"That or violence," Chris said. He gave a weak chuckle. "Violent justice? Viotice?"

Taylor shook her head. If Sophia wanted to be a hero out of costume, it would be harder, sure. She would need to be discreet and wouldn't be able to use her powers at all. As a force for good, a single, unpowered teenage girl was next to nothing, but she still could have been a hell of a lot better than she had chosen to be.

"No, I don't know what she's like as Shadow Stalker, but at school she's just a bully, a henchwoman to another bully."

Chris cocked his head. "Huh. Okay, I can honestly see the bully part, because she's kind of a jerk, but I can't see her henching. She nearly bit my head off when she thought I held a door open for her, and that was an automatic door!"

"It doesn't sound like she has a lot of friends here," Taylor said. Not that she cared one way or another.

"Friends?" Chris repeated. He scoffed "We're barely teammates. No one likes her, we barely tolerate her, and the only reason she's still here is because the alternative is prison."

It felt good to hear him say that. Some of the bullies tried to look like they were decent human beings, if only to help get away with things. Madison's whole shtick was acting cute and cuddly, but Sophia never put the same effort into an innocent facade. Some people thought she was hot, but no one thought she was nice. Taylor was glad that the heroes could see through her, at least to that degree.

On the other hand, was that it? They met with a deranged psychopath every day, and all they felt was mild annoyance? Or did they not care that Shadow Stalker was a violent thug and long as she only hurt people they didn't care about? Or did they already try to get rid of her only to have Piggot shut them down too until they were forced to cope?

"Are you transferring?"

"Hm?"

"To Arcadia. Are you changing schools, or are you planning on staying at Ghetto High?"

If she was going to have to put up with Sophia at work, there wasn't a chance in hell that she would keep dealing with her at school. "I just need to get the principal to sign off on something and I'm gone. I wouldn't stay at Winslow if you paid me." 

WWW

"For the record," Shadow Stalker said, "I like your other car better."

"It's in the shop," Gallant said as they drove down Boardwalk. It was a freaking waste of time. Nothing happened on Boardwalk but tourists, and if Shadow Stalker wanted to put up with people without punching them in the face, she'd go hang out with her friends. "Anyway, I wanted to talk to you."

"Of course you do." Freaking field therapist. As if she didn't get enough of that crap from Hammond and Yamada and all the other quacks.

"Specifically," he continued, "about Taylor."

Freakin' Hebert. "What does she want?" She thought about all the things the girl could do to her, now that she knew about her cape life. Badmouth her to the team? Like Sophia gave a crap. _Exist _at her? That was closer to the mark.

"I was hoping you could tell me that. I've met her twice, and only in costume. You go to school with her, and from what I've seen you two seem close."

"Close?" she repeated. "Like hell!"

"A close hostility. People often keep their enemies closer than their friends," Gallant said, adopting the tone he used when he thought he was being clever. "I'd like to know what you think of her."

Shadow Stalker shifted in her seat. "Okay, fine. She's a sad pathetic loser and she runs home from school crying every day because she sucks at life. Seriously, I wish she would just kill herself already so I wouldn't have to look at her anymore."

"Uh-huh," he said, entirely unperturbed. As usual. The whole time she had known him, he had only gotten perturbed once, and even that had been wholly disappointing. "Is there going to be a problem working with her?"

Shadow Stalker shrugged. "Only if she makes it one. Honestly she's so much like the rest of you people it's like she was made for this team."

"Because we're also sad pathetic losers?"

She shrugged again. "You said it, not me."

He chuckled, a response calculated specifically to irritate her. Really, the guy was worse than Battery.

She kept talking, if only to shut him up. "She's weak. Not just her powers, but on the inside. She's not a fighter, she's a born victim. If you want someone to put on a costume and dazzle the crowds, she might be able to do the circus thing with enough practice, but if you want someone to get the job done? She'll get in the way every time."

"I see." He still sounded amused. "She beat Bakuda Friday night."

Shadow Stalker raised an eyebrow at that. "I thought that was you and the pipsqueak."

"Vista and I brought her in. Myriad took her down."

She gazed out the window. Were they going to fight anyone today or just chat? "Sure she did." More likely Gallant just wanted to give Hebert credit as a way of welcoming her to the team. He coddled people and tried to make them feel good about themselves when most of the time what people needed was to face the truth—the truth that they just sucked.

"Would you like me to tell you about it?"

"Knock yourself out," she said, pulling out her phone. Maybe Emma was having more fun than she was right now. She doubted it was possible for her friend to be having less. "You have my undivided attention."

"It started off as a normal patrol. Nothing fancy, just the standard routine."

"Uh-huh," she said, logging into Facebook and checking her notifications._ Ugh, why do I have so many friends? I don't even like these people._

"She seemed disappointed, to be honest, like she had expected us to do a lot more than we do."

Shadow Stalker raised an eyebrow at that, but didn't reply.

"Then Bakuda contacted us. I don't know how she found us. I guess she just put out as many eyes on the street as she could until she got lucky. She blamed Myriad for Lung's capture and wanted revenge."

Shadow Stalker looked up from her phone. "Seriously? Taking down Bakuda is one thing, but you can't expect me to believe Hebert took down Lung."

Shadow Stalker was a predator to her core, but she knew where she stood on the Brockton Bay food chain. She hated being stuck with the Wards, but she put up with them because she couldn't fight off all of the heroes at once. Lung, well, _could_.

Gallant shrugged. "I don't know all the details. You could ask Myriad herself when we get back, or even Bakuda. Or Lung himself. Anyway, Bakuda had implanted bombs inside countless people, and threatened to start blowing them up unless Myriad gave herself up. I wanted to wait for backup, but not Myriad. As soon as I had my back turned, she stole my car and drove off to deal with Bakuda and the entire ABB by herself."

"She did _what_?" Shadow Stalker said. "_That's _why your car's in the shop?"

"Uh-huh."

"That skank!" Shadow Stalker had wanted to steal Gallant's car for nearly a year now. "Go on."

"I called Vista to help out, but by the time we caught up with her Bakuda already had her surrounded. Three gang members had guns pointed at her, maybe a hundred more were standing around the intersection, and Bakuda was there too, carrying a grenade launcher and explaining how she was going to execute her."

Shadow Stalker waited for him to go on, but he didn't. A dramatic pause. Bastard. "Then what?"

"Well," he said slowly, building up the suspense. "You've known her for a while. What do you think happened?"

_You're so annoying._ Shadow Stalker knew what she would do. She'd go into her shadow state where bullets couldn't hurt her. Explosives still could, so she'd get in close with Bakuda so the villain couldn't blow her up without hurting herself and then ... tranquilize her if she still had her gear. Otherwise she'd have to steal someone else's weapons, kill Bakuda, and explain to Piggot how her actions were justified on account of her life being in danger. But really what she'd do was not get in that situation in the first place.

"Knowing her, I'd say she died horribly, but we both know she lived, so ... I don't know, curled up in a fetal position and waited for you and Vista to come rescue her?"

"Interesting idea, but no. The first thing, the most important thing she did was let Bakuda think she won. The woman was a megalomaniac, so that was easy. All Myriad had to do was surrender, keep her head down, and act defeated. Bakuda let herself get caught up with her own gloating and didn't notice Myriad's bugs positioning themselves and disabling her men's guns. When Bakuda caught on that something wasn't right, she told her men to fire, but they couldn't. She told her men to attack, but their faces were covered in spiders. She tried to use her grenade launcher, but by then Myriad was close enough for close quarters combat, hit her in the face with her baton, and tasered her in the eye."

She tried to imagine Taylor Hebert doing that. She couldn't. Hebert didn't back down, which was annoying, but she didn't fight back either which was even worse. "Hebert doesn't stand up for herself," she said. "That's not who she is. She's too weak."

"Maybe," Gallant said. "But she stood up for a complete stranger instantly and unswervingly. Heroically, you might say. I imagine that Bakuda saw her the same way you do. Beaten. Defeated. But underneath it all? She's just patient. There's a saying I remember that may or may not have been by Oscar Wilde. 'Give a man a mask and he'll show you his true face.' You may have gone to school with her, but did you ever really know her? Because if you did, I think you two would have been friends."

Shadow Stalker stared at him and struggled to find the right string of expletives to accurately describe her disgust, but then she remembered something. Emma used to be friends with her way back when, and Emma wasn't a complete idiot. Shadow Stalker had always taken Hebert for a worn out prop that Emma didn't need anymore, the ugly friend to make Emma look better in comparison, but ...

"She really went for the eye?"

Gallant nodded. "I was pretty far away when it happened, but I heard there's a video floating around Youtube that shows it. Oh, she also bit Bakuda with a black widow. I'm still not sure why, but Bakuda was on pain killers all day yesterday complaining that she wasn't getting enough pain killers."

That Shadow Stalker could understand. If someone put her on her knees, she'd make sure they spent a long time screaming after that. But for _Hebert _to do that ...

"So is there a point to all this, or are we making small talk?"

"My point is that you and Myriad have a history together that I'd like you to forget about. Move on, start fresh, and for the good of the team, don't provoke her."

She rolled her eyes. "I'll treat her like any other teammate."

He sighed as he pulled up to a house she didn't recognize. They weren't on Boardwalk anymore. "I suppose that's the best I'm going to get. We're here."

"What's the mission?" Knowing Gallant, it was probably going to be something lame.

"To console a grieving mother who lost her son in Bakuda's attack." He hesitated. "Would you like to wait in the car?"

She gave him a flat look behind her mask. Yup. Lame. "Do you want me to come in?"

"I'd rather you didn't," he admitted.

"Then I'll wait in the car." 

WWW

Emma was in her room scrolling through her Facebook feeds, trying to come up with just the right veiled insult to help Rebecca develop an eating disorder. _What's a polite way to say that you _almost _fit into that dress?_ Maybe imply that it would look better a size smaller? Or a size larger.

Her phone buzzed. Sophia. "Hey super hero. What's up?"

"If anyone asks, you figured this out on your own, but Hebert's a cape."

She blinked. "Wait, what?"

"Hebert's a cape. Bug powers. Joined the Wards yesterday, so that was awkward."

"Slow down, Sophia. I need time to process this."

"Yeah, well deal. She knows who I am, I know who she is, and the rest of the team is all gaga for the new girl because she took down Bakuda over the weekend."

"Okay, okay." She wanted to think that Sophia was joking, but this didn't mesh with her sense of humor. "Who's Bakuda again?"

"Bomb Tinker. Took a college hostage a while back and took over the ABB after Lung went down."

Even though her best friend was a super hero, Emma had never been much of a cape geek. But she knew the ABB. She didn't she them in the corner of her eyes or wake up screaming in the night or let a single encounter with them ruin her life—not anymore—but she knew them.

_Nose ... Eye ... Mouth ..._

She swallowed. "And Taylor? What are her powers?" _Taylor has powers._

"Controls bugs. Don't know what the technical term is, but there's probably a kinesis in there somewhere."

Emma looked upward to where a moth was fluttering around her ceiling light. She took a deep breath and steeled herself. "You know, that is so her."

"Huh?"

"Don't you think? Small wriggly things you step on. Really there should be a rule that it doesn't count as having powers if you can be defeated by a can of Raid."

Sophia laughed. "That's perfect! I'm going to have to use that some time."

Emma smiled, and it almost didn't feel forced. "The real issue is that she knows who you are now. What can she do with that?"

"She can't reveal my identity without going to jail." She hesitated. "Again, you can't tell _anyone _what I told you."

"Got it." Could Taylor get Sophia arrested now that she had friends in law enforcement? She doubted it. Their pranks were mean, but they were hardly criminal, and a good lawyer (thanks, Dad) could get most of her accusations thrown out from lack of evidence. On the other hand, Sophia was still on probation. "Is there anything she could do to get you thrown off the team?"

"Maybe. If she complains to the right people. It all comes down to who's more useful. I've been here longer, I look better in costume than she does, and bugs are gross. Besides, they can't kick me out without admitting that they made a mistake bringing me in, and the PRT never makes mistakes. Officially. But if she gets the rest of the team to stand with her, well, I'm only worth so much trouble."

"Can she do that? Can she vote you off the island like some reality TV show? Who decides this?" Officially, the Wards dealt with their own issues, but unofficially, the PRT director had a lot of say.

There was a pause.

"Oh man, I can't believe I'm getting into a popularity contest with Hebert of all people."

"Look on the bright side. You can't lose."

"With these judges? Kid Win hates me, but I don't know if he hates me enough to do anything. Vista hates me too, but she does whatever Gallant wants, and he'll try to be on 'everyone's side' or some such bull crap. Browbeat probably hates me, but I can't read him at all. Aegis will stay neutral because he's the leader and he has to, so he'll hate me quietly. Clockblocker hates me, but he has a thing for me too, so he won't try to get rid of me."

Emma considered that. She wasn't any good in a fight, but as far as civilian sidekicks went, she liked to think that she pulled her weight. If she were Taylor, she'd do everything she could to turn the team against Shadow Stalker, and it didn't sound like the team needed much turning. Of course, Emma wasn't Taylor. Taylor was Taylor, and Taylor ate lunch in the bathroom because she had no friends and large groups of people freaked her out. "You could skip the contest if you convince Taylor not to push the issue. If you grind her nose in the dirt enough, she'll stop fighting back entirely. She might even quit the team. I mean, you've seen her at school. She's nearly there already."

There was another pause. "That won't work."

"Why not?"

"A couple reasons. She's Gallant's pet project right now, and if he decides that she's a damsel in distress, he's going to go full knight-in-shining-armor on my butt. Hell, I'm going to have to leave her alone at school too until he finds something else to stroke his hero complex with."

"Yeah? Well, that game was getting boring anyway." _Taylor has powers._ "We can play with someone else for a while. You could do the opposite, then. Encourage her. Get her to take risks. If she bites off more than she can chew and gets hurt, she might decide that being a hero isn't any fun. Then she'll quit, and she'll be out of your hair."

"Yeah." She laughed. "If she dies, she'll be out of everyone's hair."

Emma felt something _twist _inside of her, but she kept her voice steady. She was Sophia's friend now. Taylor would have to deal with her own problems. "But who knows how long that will take. Until then, you'll need to try to be nicer to your team."

"What, like bring them cookies?"

"No, that's too obvious. Just, I don't know, insult them less and maybe offer a grudging compliment or two. That could help them remain neutral when Taylor starts badmouthing you and spreading mean, vicious rumors." Or if she just started telling the truth. Framed the right way, the truth was plenty mean and vicious all by itself.

She groaned. "Man I hope Hebert dies fast. Anything else?"

"Yes. You need someone on your side who will stand up for you. You said that Clockblocker had a thing for you, right?"

"Oh no. Not a chance, Emma."

"I'm serious. It sounds like half the team wants you gone already, and Taylor hasn't even done anything yet. You need someone on your side making dramatic statements like, 'If she leaves, I'm leaving too!' Besides, Clockblocker carries weight. He's the next person in charge after Aegis and he's a Striker, what, seven? The only Ward stronger than him is Vista, and I think you have a better chance of seducing a seventeen year old boy than a twelve year old girl."

Sophia muttered something incoherent. "This had better be worth it. I'll try to smile at him without puking."

"Just remember, as long as you're making out with him, you don't have to hear him talk."

"Screw you, Emma."

She'd had more rewarding friendships in her life, but it was moments like this that made it all worthwhile. "And one last thing."

"Dammit."

"No, this is an easy one. Let me know when Taylor makes a public appearance in costume. I need to unravel her secret identity on my own, right? The sooner the better."

"Oh. Sure. I heard that someone caught her fight with Bakuda and put it on Youtube. I'll let you know if anything else comes up."

"Right. I'll see you tomorrow. Oh, also, if you could catch someone notorious, it would help a lot."

There was a pause. "I've put away more bad guys than the rest of the team put together."

"Yeah, but most of those were thugs that no one ever cared about."

"You never complained about that before."

That was the thing about unpowered criminals. You knew they infested the city, but you never worried about them, until they were dragging you out of the car window and talking about which part of your face they were going to mutilate. That was how they had first met, though it irritated her that Sophia would remind her of that. As though she could ever truly forget.

"This isn't about me, this is about you. You work best from the shadows, but right now, you need the spotlight. You need people talking about you, thinking about you, so if your team tries to get rid of you it will cause more of a scandal. So ignore the nameless mooks for a while and see if you can take down someone, well, not nameless."

"What, like Uber and Leet?"

"Okay, you could. I guess." They were _technically _super villains.

"No wait, you could be onto something. I've been hunting the Undersiders for ages without anyone caring, but those guys hit up a bank just last week. Beat up the rest of the Wards all by themselves. If I caught one of them on my own, that could be just what I need."

"Okay, that sounds good." Emma was the last person anyone should talk to about fighting super villains, but it felt nice that Sophia was listening to her advice. On the other hand, hadn't Sophia already fought the Undersiders before? Like, more than once? Oh well. That was her problem. They were friends, but as friends they respected each other's boundaries. Emma didn't tell Sophia how to be a super hero, and Sophia didn't tell her what to wear.

After she hung up, Emma set to hunting down Taylor's Youtube video. _Bakuda _got her a few pages of episodes from some Indian soap opera or something, but sorting the videos by upload date got her what she wanted. The camera was shaky, the video grainy, and the audio barely audible, but it got the job done.

The video started with an image of a charred corpse, and it just stayed there. _Eew_, she thought. _Why would you show us that? _Well, the video _was _age restricted.

She skipped ahead until the camera panned away, and paused when she saw someone that might be Taylor. She had the same long, black, curly hair, and the black and grey costume did nothing for her stick-thin figure. The costume suited Taylor, in that it wouldn't have looked good on anyone. There was no style to it, no recognizable insignia. It was like Taylor thought, "Hey, I like black because it makes me look edgy, and I'd rather not get stabbed too much."

_Okay. I've seen you, I recognized you, and I'm done. After all, I got better things to do than watch some loser-nerd_ ... Hold on. Hadn't Sophia said that Taylor won this fight? It didn't look like she was winning. Emma pressed play. If Taylor talked, she'd be able to recognize her voice.

Bakuda did most of the talking, though, and the sound was so bad the villain came through like a robot.

"... bulbous head with itty bitty fetus legs," she said, with Taylor kneeling on the ground and surrounded in front of her, "or bloated hands with arms too small to lift them. Maybe you'll end up some lopsided Quasimoto freak that not even a Case 53 would touch, and do you know what will happen next, Worm? I'll keep you like that. I'll show you off to my friends, rivals and all my enemies so everyone will know what happens when you mess with the ABB, and after you've gotten used to being a freak, after you start to think that maybe the life of a grotesque is still a life?

"Then I'll kill you."

And yet ... and yet despite a super villain threatening her with death and worse, Taylor looked _bored_. Emma couldn't see her face, but she could imagine her wearing the same expression she always had all those years ago whenever Emma had tried to explain to her the changes in fashion trends. Back then, Taylor would smile politely as if to say, "I'm glad you're enthusiastic about this, but I'm mentally reading a book right now."

_That's not fair,_ Emma thought. _I've seen you break down in tears far too many times from so much less than this. What, were you just faking it this whole time?  
_  
Then, in a surreal turn of events, Bakuda answered her phone and Taylor did the same. _She really is not concerned at all. _Also, when had Taylor gotten a phone? The Hebert's had an unspoken rule against cell phones ever since Taylor's mother died ... though maybe they were over it now.

Bakuda took Taylor's phone away, upset by her lack of interest in her own execution, and ordered her shot. Then ... nothing happened.

Then everything happened. Taylor rose, and the three men who'd had her at gunpoint fell back as a swarm of insects appeared out of nowhere, surrounding her so much she was nearly lost in the haze. She beat Bakuda to the ground in a matter of seconds, took out what looked to be a knife—and stabbed her in the face.

_She straight up murdered someone on camera,_ Emma thought, watching Bakuda's body go through a violent, cadaveric spasm.

The comments section argued that Taylor was tasering her instead of stabbing her, but Emma didn't buy it. She rewound the video a few seconds just to be sure, and caught something that she hadn't heard the first time around.

_"No more games."_

The one sentence Taylor had said the entire time, and Emma recognized the voice. It was colder and harder than anything Emma had ever heard from her before, but it was Taylor's all the same.

_Taylor ... has powers._ The idea finally began to sink in.

Why?

Why her?

It wasn't fair.

What was so great about Taylor?

A thought echoed back at her, a reflection of the first. _What's wrong with me?_

People close to capes were more likely to gain powers, and Emma had been Sophia's best friend for nearly two years now. Powers manifested in moments of extreme emotion, and no one could say what Emma went through, destroying everything she used to be to become who she was. Meanwhile, Taylor had spent the last three years being the emotional equivalent of a grey blob.

Besides, Emma would have made a great super hero. She had already designed a hundred and one costumes that looked better than anything the heroes of Brockton Bay were wearing, and she looked perfect in anything she wore herself. More than that, she was a fighter. On ... on the inside, at least, where it counted.

_Why her?_

Emma went to bed that night feeling very, very small. 

WWW

"So then I said, 'I don't want any special privileges,' and I stormed out of the room."

It was Monday, and Taylor had just gotten back from her morning run when she decided to give Lisa a call. She couldn't tell her anything about Shadow Stalker without revealing her secret identity—it was a strange world where Sophia was a hero and Lisa was a villain—so she told her about Piggot.

"You _what_?"

"Yes." Taylor stopped and considered Lisa's tone. She didn't sound as impressed as she was supposed to. "Wait, was that wrong?"

"Okay, look. I don't want to call you an idiot because it's not your fault you didn't trigger with super smarts, but that was the stupidest thing you could have done."

"Wait, so you _do _think that the director's a double agent?"

"Yeah, forget about that Dinah kid for five seconds; let's focus on the person who really matters right now."

"Right, that's ... that's, um ..."

"You."

"Huh." Taylor tried to wrap her head around that concept.

"Imagine that you joined a villainous organization bent on world domination, and the evil mastermind offers you a carrot for when you're good, and a stick for if you're bad. Only, he doesn't show you the whole stick, he just hints at it, because the more you know about the stick, the more likely you are to find a way to get around the stick. So he wants you to focus your attention on his big, juicy carrot instead.

"But the thing is, you want to focus on the carrot, too. You love the carrot. You need the carrot, the whole carrot, and nothing but the carrot. Because as long as he only needs the carrot to control you, the stick is slowly rotting away, lost in his shed somewhere, and when he finally does need the stick, he doesn't even know where it is anymore. So deep-throat the carrot, because no matter how much you have to suppress your gag reflex, it beats having a stick shoved up your butt."

"Um ..."

"Besides, carrots help you see in the dark."

"... What?"

"Because of all the vitamin A."

"Okay, I get what you're saying—mostly—but I do think you could have come up with a better way of phrasing it."

"Girl, when you get a better idea of what you've gotten yourself into, you'll know that there _is _no better way of phrasing it."

"What I've gotten into? You mean an evil organization trying to conquer the world?"

"No, I mean the one that's already conquered it," Lisa said. "This hemisphere at least."

"... Oh." Taylor wanted to say something like, "But they're heroes! They're the good guys!" But with Piggot's casual acceptance of corruption and Sophia being, well,_ part of the freakin' team,_ Taylor ... couldn't. "So you're saying that I should go back to Piggot and tell her that I changed my mind and want to get away with everything short of murder just like—just like the others?"

"No, that's no good. You already burnt that bridge; going back now will look suspicious. You'll have to find some other carrot to fellate."

"You need to come up with a different metaphor."

"Fame, fortune," Lisa continued, ignoring her. "No, not fortune. You guys work for peanuts. Networking? Could you take advantage of your position to promote social changes that you pretend to care about? Or something?"

Taylor remembered the abandoned ferry project that her father had been working on a while back. "Maybe, but that sounds pretty complicated. Can't I just be, I don't know, really enthusiastic about helping people?"

Lisa let out a long-suffering sigh. "No, that kind of behavior just weirds them out. If you owned a business and your accountant was madly in love with math but refused to cash in his paychecks, you'd assume he was either up to something or just nuts. You're not volunteering at a soup kitchen, you're part of the system, and the system wants people it can control. That means it needs to see you as dependent on it instead of the other way around."

Taylor hung her head. "You know, I used to think I was really cynical. Then I met you. Okay, um, let's see. I'm transferring to Arcadia, and I'm pretty happy about that. Winslow is like hell, only worse."

"Okay, yeah. That could work. Just remember to flaunt how much you like Arcadia so word gets back to your corporate masters."

"Right." She hung up the phone and, for the first time that year, thought about what she was going to wear to school. It usually didn't matter. Most of the time, she left home looking like a bowl of oatmeal with varying degrees of brown sugar, but today was a special occasion. Her last day of Winslow High! It was like going to Hitler's funeral.

She dug through her closet, looking for something bright and cheerful, something eye-catching that said, "So long, suckers! I'm going away forever!"

She didn't have much like that. Finally she found the clothes Lisa had bought her, still in the bag. They didn't suit her at all; in fact they suited the exact opposite of her, which was exactly what she was going for. She squeezed into a pair of jeans so tight she didn't even need to wear a belt with them and pulled on a sky blue crop top that showed off the figure she didn't have.

She looked at herself in the mirror, which she usually avoided, and decided she looked ridiculous. But that was okay. People were allowed to look ridiculous once a year, and she hadn't dressed up last Halloween, so she was fine. Besides, with the exception of Sophia, when was she going to see any of those people again?

She turned to leave, stopped, looked at her reflection again, and tore the tags off her clothes. Okay. _Now _she was ready. 

WWW

School was ... strange. Today was like wearing a shirt that had shrunk in the wash and no longer fit; still the same thing, but if felt wrong. Maybe it was the sense of hope, that this place had an exit now and Taylor wouldn't be trapped in here forever. She hated feeling hopeful. It always felt like she was being tricked.

She handed her transfer papers into the principal's office. This was her first day back since her suspension, and she had thought about skipping the rest of the day and coming back later, but she changed her mind. No, she was staying, staying to say goodbye to everyone she hated.

She spotted Sophia before Sophia saw her, as usual. Taylor had despised her before, when she only knew her as a bully, but now? Now she knew Sophia as a false hero, a fraud, a hypocrite. _Her _Taylor wouldn't say goodbye to, not today. Maybe after Sophia's next parole hearing, though she doubted that she would get much justice there. Most of the people who knew about it enough to show up would only know Shadow Stalker, which said a lot about how dedicated they were to finding out the truth. But Taylor would show up, say her piece, give the system one last chance to do its job, and if that didn't work, well ... she'd figure it out from there.

Sophia gave her a cold, calculating look, even though most of the time she'd never admit that Taylor was worth calculating. That worried her. Sophia was the only one who might know that Taylor was leaving. What was she planning? Some going away present?

Taylor planted a few bugs on her just to keep track of her. A fly in her hair, an ant on her shoe. She promised herself when she first got her powers that she wouldn't use them on her bullies, but this was okay. She wouldn't attack them with her bugs, but surveillance was fine.

Emma in her second period math class was harder to read. There was a flash of ... something when Emma first noticed her, but it vanished behind her eyes so quickly Taylor couldn't be sure if it had been there in the first place.

_How much do you know?_

She was almost certain that Emma knew about Shadow Stalker, less certain that Madison and the others knew, but did Sophia tell Emma about Myriad?

_Let's find out._

In the middle of a lecture about sinusoidal functions, Taylor took over a fly, flew it over to Emma, and had it land on the back of her hand. Normally, she'd brush it away and be done with it, but today ...

"EEEAAAHH!"

She screamed and nearly fell out of her chair—and looked Taylor right in the eye.

_That cretin._

If Mr. Quinlan had better hearing, Emma might have given him a heart attack, but instead the old teacher finished drawing a graph on the chalkboard and calmly turned around. "Yes? Was there a question?"

Some people looked at Emma and a few sniggered, but no one answered.

"No? Very well then. Can anyone identify the amplitude, midline, and extrema of this function?"

It shouldn't have bothered her that Sophia had revealed her secret. Sophia knew, and she was the last person Taylor would want knowing, so adding Emma to that list was barely worth mentioning. Still, being a cape was supposed to be the one thing that was hers and hers alone. She knew that she was sacrificing some of that when she joined the Wards, but still ... she felt violated.  
_  
It doesn't matter,_ she told herself._ I'm never going to see her again after today. It doesn't matter._

Biology was uneventful, as was Mr. Gladly's world issues class. Madison gave her outfit a few confused looks, but when Taylor landed a bug on her she didn't panic like Emma had._ Okay, so only Emma knows._ That meant that Madison probably didn't know about Shadow Stalker either. Taylor tagged her with a bug all the same. Whatever her bullies were planning for her, it was likely to be big and would involve all three of them together.

Lunchtime. She realized that today was the first time she was in school for lunch since the trio had poured juice on her in the bathroom, despoiling her previous sanctuary. Should she go to the cafeteria, one last time? She toyed with the idea, but its only virtue was its own idiocy, and she disregarded it. Instead, she went out through the front door and walked away.

She had missed more classes last week than she had attended, and that taught her something. No one really cared or noticed if she skipped school. She ate her lunch on a bench at a bus stop about half a mile away from Winslow, and still had enough time to read before she had to head back. _I should have thought of this my freshman year._

The rest of the day was ... nerverackingly dull. She kept on waiting for the trio to do something, but they didn't even shove her in the hallway. Taylor tagged Julia, Samantha, and another dozen girls that often joined in on the trio's pranks, watching their movements throughout the day, but there was nothing. They would congregate periodically, but never around her. If anything, they avoided her.

_What are you planning? _she thought for the umpteenth time. The worst parts of the day for pranks were lunch time, which she had already survived, and right after school.

And right after school, Taylor finally caught on. Her bugs on Emma, Sophia, and Madison sensed them go into the bathroom together, do something, and run out. The smart thing to do was to go to the principal's office, grab her transfer papers, and never come back. The dumb thing to do was to wander into the bathroom where she could be easily trapped by her bullies one last time.

Still, she was curious. She waited until the trio and their lackeys were out of sight and crept in. There was an overturned waste bin in the bathroom, garbage strewn across the floor, and the syncopated sound of sobbing coming from one of the stalls. Taylor did the math and let out a sigh.

Her bullies had found a new target.

_You're done here,_ she told herself._ This isn't your problem._

She stepped into the next stall over and sat down on the toilet seat. The sobbing next to her went quiet and tried to pretend that it wasn't there.

"It's been a while since I cried over their pranks," Taylor said to the silence. "I would get angry sometimes, but most of the time I would just shut down and not be there. Life can only get so bad when you're dead inside. But, it can't get much better either."

She waited, and eventually the silence spoke back. "You're ... who are you?"

"Their previous target." Taylor didn't need to say any more than that. Everyone in the school knew who she was, if only to know whom not to know.

"Oh ... oh God, no. Am I the new you?"

Taylor didn't much like the way she phrased that, but being the new her wasn't something Taylor would wish on anyone. Who was this new victim? A friend of one of the bullies? It would fit their modus operandi. Or maybe the trio had just picked someone at random now that Taylor was on her way out.

"No. They might see you that way, they might not, but no matter what they do to hurt you, _never _let them define you. If I can give you any advice with dealing with them, it's that. Know who you are, and don't let them change that."

The girl fell silent again, and for a moment Taylor thought that she came on too strong. Maybe she was overreacting. Maybe this was a one time only thing and Taylor was needlessly scaring her.

"What are they going to do to me?"

"Anything they can. I started making a list last September of everything they've done, and so far I've filled up several notebooks with everything from verbal abuse to psychological torture. Death by a thousand cuts any way you look at it. Expect them to put you in positions where you can't fight back without making things worse for yourself, and then expect them to take your passivity for permission to go further."

"So what can I do?"

Taylor looked for some silver lining, but found none. The truth was that in a year and a half, Taylor had done very little to stop them._ Get super powers and transfer to Arcadia. _"There's a lot you can try, but I haven't found anything that worked for me. They'll outnumber you and coordinate their lies, so telling a teacher won't do anything besides make the bullies more cautious and vindictive. There are plenty of gangs in the school that market violence, so if you have enough money you could hire some thugs to rough them up a bit. I wouldn't condone something like that, but I'd understand it. Though Emma and her friends might just pay them off to turn on you, and that would just escalate the problem. Whatever you do, don't hire any of Winslow's junior E88's to go after Sophia. That ... that wouldn't end well." Taylor pictured the scenario in her mind. _Oh, those poor Nazis._

"They wouldn't work for me anyway," she said. "I'm Jewish. And I don't have the money anyway."

"That's probably for the best. Second option, if you can't fight back, avoid them. Stay home from school for a year or two and come back after they graduate, or just drop out entirely and study for the GED. It might not look good when you're trying to get into college, but the bullies will make your grades suffer if you stay."

"Is there a third option?"

"If you can't fight back and you can't back down, the only thing left to do is endure. Don't lose hope. Remember that the school day ends at three and the semester ends in June, and you can make it till then. Have something on the weekends you can look forward to, and ... and have friends. That one is important. Even if your friends can't help you fight back, having friends willing to suffer with you helps, though people like that are rare." Taylor used to think she had someone like that. She turned out to be wrong.

The girl fell silent again. It was a lot to process, and Taylor hadn't given her any good news. "Why me?"

Taylor smiled despite herself. "Do you have any idea how many times I've asked myself that exact question? Was it because I was ugly? Awkward? Unlikable? What was wrong with me? I never found the answer, but I did find a better question. Do you really want to stare into the abyss long enough to understand it? Some people are just monsters. But I can promise you—"

_Stop._

_You've done your time._

_Go home, let something horrible happen to someone else because God knows you've had your turn._

She swallowed. She imagined what it would be like to go to Arcadia, a place where no one knew her except for the few Wards already there. She'd be able to start over and make friends with people who didn't identify her as the omega tier loser, and every now and then she'd pass by Dean or Dennis or Carlos or Chris or Robert in the hallway, and they'd share a knowing smile with each other before passing by. Taylor held onto that dream for one last moment ... and let go.

"I can promise you that you won't have to go through it alone. I'll always be here to pull you out of the locker so you won't have to wait for the janitor to pass by. It's not going to be fun, but you could survive anything as long as you have someone with you."

_Damn you,_ she thought. _I was free! Damn you for making me stay here!_

"Thank you," she whispered.

"Don't mention it."

Even now that she had a way out, she couldn't leave, not if it meant Sophia, Emma, and their pack doing to someone else what they had done to her.

_No._

She took that sentiment, flipped it over, and grabbed it by the hilt. She _wouldn't _leave if it meant that the bullies would just move on to torment someone else.

"Hey, can I ask you something?" the girl said.

"Sure."

"What's your name?"

"What?"

"I mean, I've only ever known you as Locker Girl. Um, sorry."

_Locker Girl?_ Huh. "It's Taylor. You?"

"Charlotte."

"Well, Charlotte, are you ready to get out of here?" She forced a smile. Most of her smiles were forced these days. "Class ended at three; you don't have to be here anymore. There has to be something terribly wrong with you if you're hanging around this hell hole by choice."

After she got home, Taylor called the principal's office and asked her to cancel her transfer. Winslow High, it seemed, wasn't done with her yet. And she wasn't yet done with it.

WWW

A/n And that's a wrap.

Piggot was a challenge to write because she's both fairly ambiguous and a fan favorite. She's easily the best PRT director we've seen, if only because she only opposed Skitter as a villain, so the bar isn't exactly high. My personal interpretation of her is that she expects capes to be entitled and corrupt and uses their innate pettiness to control them, and when that works the cycle reinforces her perception of entitled, corrupt capes. In her interlude, Shadow Stalker described her as "useful" in the same way Emma was useful, and, oddly enough, she's also the most entitled and corrupt member of the team.

I know a lot of people were hoping for a climactic battle of good versus evil, and I hope you weren't too disappointed. Though honestly, I've read too many fics where Hero Taylor has to do nothing more than point her finger at Sophia in front of the Wards and accuse her of being a huge jerk, and then they ship Sophia off to juvie for the rest of the story. I understand wanting to focus on other issues, but it all seems too neat for me, especially when appealing to authority has never solved anything in Worm.

I would like to thank Edale and Shea for helping sift through the internet for official Wildbow statements relevant to this story. I have no idea how to navigate Reddit or SpaceBattles, and apparently that's where all the good stuff is. Also, I would like to thank everyone for reviewing this story. If you enjoy it quietly, I'll never know, but if you leave a detailed review telling me what worked for you and what didn't, that will make me both a better and more motivated writer.

Edit: I've redone Piggot's scene to make her come off as less of a jerk and to let Taylor do a better job of making her accusations. It was actually fairly controversial the first time around, so hopefully this version makes it a bit better.

Edit: I've redone it again, this time writing the scene from Piggot's perspective. Hopefully, it's slightly better.


	8. Chapter 8

The Other Way

Chapter Eight

When you worked in the PRTHQ, there were places where you weren't supposed to go, and places where you weren't allowed to go. Not knowing about the second category could get you in a lot of trouble, but knowing about the first category could get you into just the right amount.

Shadow Stalker was not supposed to visit the prisoners in the holding cells, but she _was_ allowed to. If she got caught, she'd be firmly asked to leave, but she knew enough about the prison sector's security protocols to avoid that.

At the moment, there were only two villains locked up, both from the same gang. They wore prison uniforms with _VILLAIN _labels instead of costumes, but Shadow Stalker knew who they were.

Lung sat in an E-type containment cell, visible only through a computer screen. You could tell a lot about someone by watching them in a prison, watching them after they had lost their freedom, their weapons, and their masks. When Shadow Stalker had been imprisoned—God, that was almost a year ago—she had gone a bit feral, cursing with every breath and striking every wall that wouldn't electrocute her in return.

Lung, though, was patient. Even here, he had a _presence_ to him that his size couldn't explain. He had lost his mask, but the mask was just a formality, an empty motion that he no longer needed to go through. He sat on his bed in a cell too small for him to stand up in, eternally patient, as though waiting for the PHQ to fall apart around him were a minor inconvenience.

Bakuda was the opposite. She huddled in the corner of her cell, fidgeting and muttering a silent mantra to calm herself. How old was she? Nineteen? Twenty? Some capes were themselves no matter what, but others covered themselves with so many decorations, airs, and acts, that after you unmasked them, there was hardly anything left.

_Pathetic._ Shadow Stalker had never faked anything. She was who she was, a predator, in costume and out.

"Hey, Lung."

No response. Oh, right. She pressed the intercom button and tried again. "Hey, Lung."

Still nothing.

"Hey, Lung. Hello? Can you hear me? Is this working?" She frowned. She couldn't smack him around to get information out of him, which was her usual MO without the code to open the door, and she'd probably get killed if she even tried. All she could do right now was try to provoke him by talking, and that was what she kept Emma around for. She tried it anyway. "Your mom's fat."

"Is there something you want?" Bakuda asked behind her.

While Lung was locked up tighter than Fort Knox—if Fort Knox could turn into a giant, fire breathing monster at will—with state of the art technology keeping him in place, Bakuda's cell was the opposite. Tinker Protocols. You couldn't use Tinker Tech to lock up a Tinker unless you were a better Tinker than all the Tinker's put together. Bakuda's cell was made out of some super strong, nonreactive, transparent polymer that had hair holes for a ventilation system. At least, that was the technical term for it. To Shadow Stalker, it was just tough plastic.

"Is your boss deaf?"

"He's not my boss anymore, and no, he's just ignoring you." She had a slight Boston accent and her voice sounded nasally. Not really the sort of voice that could command a gang, but hadn't she disguised it? Most people who did that just had a secret identity they were attached to. "While he does have a lot of insecurities involving his parentage, none of them include his mother's weight. You might try calling him a eunuch, though."

Well, she had nothing to lose. She pressed the intercom again. "Are you going to face me, or don't you have the balls?"

His head turned, slowly and indominately, like continental drift. "What chattering fool has come to wake me? Name yourself, and I shall visit you."

Shadow Stalker hesitated and turned back to Bakuda. "Does he always speak fortune cookie?"

Bakuda gave her a flat look with her one eye. The other one was covered in a bandage. "Have you ever actually had one?"

"Hey, do you want me to come in there?"

Bakuda scoffed. "I'd like to see you try."

Shadow Stalker glanced at the plastic walls of her cell, shifted into her shadow state, and pushed her form through the air holes. "You know the fun thing about letting prisoners have privacy rights? No one is watching us." She wasn't allowed inside the cells, not without permission, supervision, and several pounds of paperwork, but if anyone wanted to check up on the prisoners, a light on the security cameras would flash and Shadow Stalker would have six seconds to leave.

"You're right," Bakuda said slowly. "No one's around but us." By her tone of voice, she had something more mutually beneficial than what Shadow Stalker had in mind.

Well, best to establish their positions early on. Shadow Stalker gut punched her, threw her to the ground, and planted a foot on her chest. "Exactly. So I'll make you a deal. Tell me what I want to know, and I'll hit you less."

Bakuda let out a gasp and gritted her teeth. "Do you have daddy issues? Because everything about you screams—_ow_!"

"Everything about _you _is going to be screaming too if you keep that up."

"Leave a mark on me and I'll sue you, you and that bug freak both."

"I've been doing this longer than you have. I know how to hand out beatings that look self inflicted, and juries tend to like heroes more than villains."

Bakuda took a deep breath. "Okay, fine. You ask me a question, and I'll ask you a question. _Quid pro quo._"

"_Quid pro suck it._ I ask you a question, and you tell me an answer."

Bakuda took a breath, then smiled. "Very well. Let's _chat_."

Shadow Stalker glared at her behind her mask. The villain gave in too quickly, though Shadow Stalker had more important things to do. "Did Myriad really fight Lung?"

"That's what this is about? Why don't you just read your own reports?"

She shrugged. "This is more fun." Besides, she became a cape to fight, not to read. She pressed her foot down harder. "And I'm asking the questions."

"Okay, fine, yes. She was there. She fought. She had her bugs bite Lung's balls off. Are we done?"

"Wait, what? She bit off his balls?" _She went for Bakuda's eye and Lung's balls._ If Shadow Stalker didn't know her personally, she would have been impressed. As it was, she was getting a better picture of her newest teammate. Gallant's words came back to her, that they might have become friends under different circumstances, but she brushed them away. Still, the girl was _vicious_, and Shadow Stalker could respect viciousness_._ "_Why?_"

Bakuda shrugged, still on the ground under her boot. "Beats me. If you want to beat Lung, you have to take him down before he can transform. Maybe she thought that removing his ability to produce testosterone would slow him down. Or maybe she's just sexually repressed. Anyway, by the time the Undersiders got there, all they had to do was knock him over and he was out."

She froze. "The Undersiders? They were there too? She was _working_ with them?" Three out of four of them weren't important enough to think about, but Grue seemed to be hand crafted by the devil himself to get in her way. She had gotten him a few months ago, but not well enough to finish him off.

Surprise flickered across Bakuda's features, but then she smiled. "Are you sure you've been doing this longer than I have? Villains don't have prisons, kid, that's what the heroes are for. When a villain wants to take out a rival permanently, we have two choices. One, we kill them. It's straight forward, lots of fun, but it can get you the wrong kind of attention. The second option is to get a hero to help. The villain gets rid of a rival without a kill count, and the hero gets all the credit. She stalled Lung until the Undersiders could deal with Oni Lee, and she got to turn him in. Did you think that she beat me on her own? No, she had the Undersiders feeding her intel the whole time. I'd bet you my right eye she has Grue on speed dial."

Shadow Stalker took her foot off of Bakuda as she put the pieces together. _That's why she left Gallant behind. She didn't want to face Bakuda alone, she just wanted the Undersider's help more than his. Now Hebert is the Wards' new rising star, and the Undersiders have the docks practically to themselves._

"I'll keep in touch." She phased through the plastic wall. "Don't go anywhere."

WWW

_What am I doing here? _Taylor thought.

She wondered about what she had first wanted when she had joined the Wards. To make a difference? Between her talk with Armsmaster and the handbook she had been forced to read, she didn't see much chance of that. To get away from her bullies? Sure, until it turned out that Sophia Hess had joined up first. To make new friends? Ha. See above. To meet the heroes?

Well, the heroes were much less impressive now that Taylor was one. Powers were neat, but they were all still human.

She glanced over to Miss Militia, who had requested her for sidekick duty. Miss Militia wore army fatigues and a scarf and sash with the American Flag. On anyone else it would have looked lazy, like a cape had just decided to accessorize camo and called it a day, but Miss Militia made it look good. Professional. While everyone else was trying to look unique, Miss Militia took something that was already recognizable and moved on.

They sat together in a PRT van, one of the incognito ones. Instead of a PRT logo and a containment foam turret mounted on the top, it was white and green with a massive black widow spider painted on the side with the logo _Preventive Pest Control_. Myriad wondered if that was Miss Militia's sense of humor or just a coincidence.

"So, Myriad," Miss Militia said. "I've read your file. Arthropokineses and arthropodovoyance. Is that correct?"

She wasn't sure if either of those had been words before she came along, but she nodded. "That's about it."

Her weapon shifted to a sniper rifle with the butt resting on the floor. "How serious are you about being a cape?"

"I'm ... not sure." A month ago becoming a cape was the only thing that got her through the day. After trying it out, it just didn't seem like what she had been hoping for.

Miss Militia nodded as her sniper rifle turned into a fire ax. "The job's not for everyone, and not everyone with powers should be compelled to fight. But I've read the Bakuda report, and already you've done more than some heroes have done in years. We could really use your help."

She shrugged. "I got lucky." Bakuda could have killed her several times over if she hadn't wanted to make a show out of it. "Being able to control bugs isn't going to change a whole lot."

"Against the large scale threats, probably not, but let me explain the situation the city is in. Most of the time when a fight breaks out, the villains decide when and where. The heroes are forced into a reactive role, waiting for the villains to strike. If we're on duty eight hours a day, then we have to be three times as strong as the villains just to match them."

Myriad frowned. "But instead they outnumber you."

"Unfortunately yes, but it's not strictly a numbers game. Not every villain commits a crime that we can respond to every day; some of them perform a robbery once or twice a month and go quiet until they run out of money. One of the greatest determining factors is what we do while we're waiting. Tinkers like Armsmaster and Kid Win can develop new machinery, but that's not an option for you. Others can devote more time to training. That's helpful for capes with little experience, but the benefits diminish over time and training is no substitute for field experience. Others seek out unpowered criminals to apply pressure to the villain gangs, but henchmen are easily replaced. The game is set against us, but that means that the most important player is whoever can change the rules."

"How do we do that?" she asked, but something in Miss Militia's tone bothered her. _How do _I _do that?_

"By seizing the proactive role. If we can locate their bases of operation, their meeting places, their storehouses, then strike on _our_ terms, then we can bring in all of our forces instead of the third that is on shift and bring the villain presence down to a level we can control."

"And for that we need ..."

"Information gathering. Surveillance. Media sensationalism focuses on the fights, but the fights are won and lost based on the long, slow hours spent watching and waiting. If you want to make a difference, that's how it will get done; not with a few acts of courage, but with a consistent pattern of patience."

The first thing Myriad thought was, _That sounds horribly boring._ Then she thought, _I wonder if I could read a book at the same time._ She hadn't brought one with her. Her third thought was, _I wonder how long a parasitoid wasp's eggs can survive within a human host. _Since they didn't lay their eggs in people instinctively, they'd be easy to track even if the target escaped her range.

She'd have to check the handbook to see if that was allowed, though. Freaking handbook.

She looked out the window. They were in the downtown area, and not the nice part. "So is that our mission today? We're doing a stakeout?" Despite herself, the idea of going on a stake out with _Miss Militia_ sounded exciting, and far less frivolous than the standard patrol.

Miss Militia had a way of smiling with just her eyes. "A series of practice stakeouts is more like it, just to give you a feel of things. There are a few buildings in this area that gang members have been known to frequent. You will investigate the premise, and then we'll play things by ear."

Soon the van slowed to a stop as it pulled over and parked on the side of the road. "Is this close enough?" the PRT officer said. It was a woman's voice, which Myriad hadn't expected. PRT body armor left a lot to the imagination.

"This is perfect, Cooper. Myriad, do you see that building over there? Members of the Empire Eighty-Eight have been known to frequent it. Peering through the windows and watching the doors only gets us so much, and kicking the door down would alert them."

Myriad nodded. "You can only surprise them once. If no one important is home or if they outmatch you, then you've wasted your chance. Do you want me to send some bugs in?" She reached out with her power and called all the bugs within her range to her location. She didn't have many bugs with her, which was probably a mistake, but she imagined that Miss Militia wouldn't appreciate riding around with her in a van full of spiders.

"Not yet. First I want to know what your powers can tell you _without _actively using them."

She frowned. "What for?"

"Because," she said, "of the Fourth Amendment. Without a search warrant, any information we gather would be admissible in a court of law. If we see or hear something criminal through a window, however, we would have probable cause to investigate further. Parahuman abilities complicate the matter further because each one sets its own precedent. Have you heard of the Thinker X-Ray Rex? He could see through walls, and as long as he wasn't trespassing, he didn't need a search warrant. However, if a Tinker were to build a visor to imitate X-Ray Rex's powers, then using it would violate people's privacy rights."

"So using my powers passively is fine, but using them actively isn't."

"Generally. Like I said, everyone is their own precedent."

"Got it." Controlling bugs was active, but she had to actively block their senses if she wanted to focus on anything out. She reached out with her power to take control of the bugs already inside, and then relaxed.

As usual, what followed was a deluge of nonsense. No one really understood how many bugs there were in even the cleanest of areas, but that was because most of them lived in the walls and under the floorboards, in the dark cracks out of sight and out of mind. That meant that while Myriad got a decent three-dimensional picture of the building, most of the inside of the different rooms were in blindspots.

"I can tell that there are people in there, but that's about it." She shrugged. "Most bugs aren't interested in people."

Miss Militia nodded, as though she had expected that. "Very well. Switch to active use. Send in more if you have to."

Inside the building, ants, termites, weevils, and cockroaches emerged from cracks in the wall and flies came in from outside. "Even without a warrant?"

"You won't be able to use what you find as evidence, but that's not always an issue. If you foil a kidnapping, the victim will happily testify even if you cannot."

Myriad thought of Mr. Alcott and his kidnapped daughter. "Does that happen a lot?"

"No, but usually if we know about a kidnapping before we charge in, we can get a warrant first. The second situation is more common: we find someone who already has an arrest warrant."

"Got it." She poured more bugs into the building, trying to get a better picture of what was going on. The second floor was empty, the first floor had two people, and five ... five or six people in the basement, standing in a distorted circle. No one looked tied up, and Myriad couldn't see anyone's faces to tell if they were ...

Oh. Duh. Most capes wore masks, and unpowered criminals weren't her concern. That was how she had identified Bakuda five seconds before the villain had started blowing her up. She had her bugs fly at head level until she found something.

"There's two people on the first floor, six more in the basement. One of the basement people is wearing a mask."

Miss Militia's eyes widened. "Really? Good. Can you describe it?"

"It's smooth, metallic ... um, give me a moment." She had her bugs crawl around it, but not so many that the cape would notice. Hopefully. "It's like a welder's mask, but with horns? Sorry, I can't be more specific."

"What about the rest of him?"

"Well, he's hairy and shirtless, so he's definitely a man. Hair down to his shoulders. He's big, too. About as big as Lung. Maybe a bit taller, but not as broad. Wait, hold on, there's actually two people in masks. The other one has this sort of wire cage thing. This one is shorter and has a buzz cut."

Miss Militia nodded. "Pull up the villain database on your phone. See if they match anyone."

Myriad took out her PRT issued phone, which was considerably nicer than the one Lisa had given her, and looked up the database. Miss Militia had said that this was an Empire building, so Myriad started with Kaiser, but neither of the capes in the basement fit. Kaiser usually wore a suit of armor, and she couldn't imagine him strutting around without his shirt on, not during what looked to be some sort of meeting. Krieg was next on the list, but the mask was wrong. Kaiser's next lieutenant was ...

"It's him," she said, pointing at a picture of Hookwolf's human form. He was a Changer, capable of turning into a giant wolf made entirely out of blades. "The mask didn't have horns, it had ears."

Miss Militia looked thoughtful. "So he's here. The other cape is probably Cricket. Is Stormtiger there too?"

Myriad opened up Stormtiger's file and searched the room again. Stormtiger was tall, fit, and never wore a shirt while in costume. _What is it with super powered neo-Nazis and not wearing shirts? _"No, no one in there matches his description. Were you expecting this?"

"I knew it was a possibility. Hookwolf, Cricket, and Stormtiger often work together, and I suspected that Hookwolf might hold his fights here. Dog fights and pit fights aren't optimized sources of income, but they're his favorite. Violence has always been his biggest vice, and he has been killing people for sport—or _honorable combat_—in pit fights since before he triggered. But if he's here, now ..."

"Can we capture him?" Myriad didn't expect her own powers to be effective against someone covered in metal, and his wolf form was probably bullet proof.

If it came down to a fight, she'd have to focus on Cricket. Most of what she knew about Cricket came from when Myriad was trying to come up with a bug-themed cape name. One of the few bug names that didn't sound villainous or pathetic was already taken by a villain that had nothing to do with bugs. She just fought with enhanced reflexes and tiny scythes. Not fair at all.

"I'm thinking. If we attack and he gets away, he'll know this location is compromised and we'll miss out on all the information we might glean here." She paused. "How well can you _hear_ with your bugs?"

Myriad hesitated. A week ago she would have said not at all, but now she wasn't so sure. Since Bakuda's sonic bomb had blasted her eardrum into smithereens, her bugs had compensated in ways she wouldn't have imagined. Could her bugs recognize sounds? Absolutely. But could they distinguish _words_?

She closed her eyes and concentrated.

WWW

"Oh boy," Hookwolf said. "Nothing like a game of charades."

"Dammit, is Cricket's vocalizer broken _again_?" Rune complained.

"I'll bet you anything that piece of junk was made in China," Alabaster said, shaking his head.

Cricket gesticulated wildly, her voice coming out in squeaks and hisses.

"Okay, okay, let's just get this over with," Hookwolf said. "Two words. Not two words? You're holding up two fingers, dimwit!"

"Perhaps the first word is the number two," Victor suggested. "Or the preposition to. Or the adverb too."

Hookwolf rolled his eyes. "No one likes a smartass. Okay, two ... two what?"

"I-I could help her regenerate her voice box so she could just tell us," Othala suggested.

Cricket gave her a look that said, with no words at all, that she was proud of her scars and would personally skin alive anyone who interfered with them.

"Oh, don't give her that look," Victor said. "I can think of five people in this room alone who would happily slit your throat afterward to make up for it."

Rune leaned against the wall. "You know, if this meeting were an email, we'd be done by now."

Cricket put her hands on her hips and posed dramatically.

"Capes!" Hookwolf and Alabaster said together. They glared at each other.

"I said it first," Alabaster said.

"First of all," Hookwolf said, "it doesn't matter. Second of all, not even close."

Alabaster looked at Rune, requesting back up. "Okay," she said. "Hookwolf has killed _way_ more people than you have, so he's obviously right."

"Damn straight," Hookwolf said. "So two capes. Oh, I hope they're close. I haven't ripped anyone's faces off all day."

"Um, you know," Othala said, "there are ways of dealing with people without murdering them."

"Victor," Hookwolf said without turning around. "Your stupid wife is being stupid again. Tell her to stop being stupid."

"Yes, yes, I'll talk to her," Victor said, looking at his phone. He smiled at a video compilation of people hilariously failing to skateboard and showed it to Othala, who winced.

"So two capes," Hookwolf said. "Or to .. yeah, two capes. And ..."

Cricket held her hands in front of her as though holding onto something and moved them up and down.

"Milking cows!" Alabaster said triumphantly. "Or ... not. It was worth a shot."

"Driving cars?" Hookwolf guessed. "Yeah! Two capes, driving cars, driving in circles? _In_ cars.

"I have an idea," Othala said.

"No one cares," Hookwolf said.

"What if Victor—"

"I said shut up."

"Used his power—"

"God, you're annoying."

"To read lips, and ..."

Rune shook her head and let out a sigh. "Yup," she said, mostly to herself. "This should have been an email."

WWW

"Sorry," Myriad said, opening her eyes. "I can tell that they're talking, but I can't make out any words."

Miss Militia nodded. "Well, it was worth a try. We'll pull out and monitor this location from a safe distance."

"We're not attacking?" As amazing as it would be to watch the entire East-North-East Protectorate descend upon a few unsuspecting Empire villains, this was probably safer.

She shook her head. "Avoiding civilian casualties is always a priority, and we can't clear the area without alerting the villains inside. For now, we'll observe."

That made sense. Someone who had been a hero for as long as Miss Militia wouldn't take unnecessary risks.

"Wait," Myriad said. "Something's happening down there. Oh! He must be changing into his wolf form. Now he's coming up the stairs."

Miss Militia's eyes widened. "Cooper! Drive!"

With her bugs on Hookwolf and lined within the walls of the building, Myriad could "see" him move. The door to the building burst open along with much of the wall and Hookwolf, a figure of wickedly curved blades, rammed into the van, knocking it over. The engine hummed in vain, and Myriad pulled her seatbelt off to free herself.

Hookwolf stood on top of the van and clawed at the door, shattering the window and bending the steel until he had a hole wide enough to stick his head through. Myriad held her arms up in front of her face to shield herself, but that only meant that when Hookwolf's jaws came clamping down, they bit down on her arm instead of her head.

She knew her costume was knife proof and she hoped it was bullet proof, but when it came to being crushed, she might as well have been wearing nylon. Hookwolf lifted her into the air and whipped her body around like a chew toy before tossing her into the air.

She flew for a moment. She hadn't flown since the night she met Glory Girl, and that had terrified her. Trusting someone with her life like that, knowing that they could drop her at any second and hoping that they wouldn't was more than she could handle.

She was almost grateful to finally hit the ground. She landed limply on the asphalt and rolled, more due to her own momentum than any combat training. She was about twenty or thirty feet from the van when she stopped, and she was facing it so she had a perfect view of Miss Militia shooting Hookwolf in the face with a canon.

WWW

Miss Militia reformed her weapon instead of reloading it manually and fired again, thinking that the Neo-Nazi might appreciate being blasted with the Swiss Solothurn S-18/1100 more than the Soviet PTRD-41. It was these little courtesies that helped heroes and villains get along as well as they did.

She would have happily treated him to a Panzerfaust 3, but, well, there were _people _here.

A man in a white robe came out next, carrying two handguns. Alabaster. Miss Militia open fired with an uzi, careful to avoid his head. He went down, but he restored himself a moment later so his clothes weren't even bloody. She fired again, this time with rubber bullets. That would take him out of the fight for a few seconds before his powers recharged, but a few seconds in a fight like this could last a lifetime.

"We got a grade A Charlie Foxtrot on our hands!" Cooper yelled into her radio. "Requesting backup! Repeat, if there's anyone in the downtown area who can hear this ..."

A pool table came flying out of the building, forcing Miss Militia to duck. It veered upwards and was about to come crashing down on her before she blasted it into wood chips and splinters.

_So that's Hookwolf, Cricket, Alabaster, and Rune. And Myriad said there were _six _of them._

Not exactly a fight to bring a rookie Ward.

WWW

_Ow._

Myriad was pretty sure her arm was broken, but that was her fault. She had found Hookwolf's and Cricket's masks with her bugs and had stopped paying attention to the rest of them.

She played dead and reached out again with her power. Everything in the area with more than four legs continued marching toward her, but she wasn't sure how useful most of the bugs would be. With what she had on hand, she kept track of the Empire members.

Hookwolf and the villain who looked like he was part of the KKK were out on the street, both on the ground. Four more of the basement people were up on the first floor now with the two people who were originally on the first floor. Were those two guards? Lookouts? Or were they capes too?

If they were, they had pretty lazy costumes, used guns, and were hanging back. Out of the other four, three were women. One of those women was Cricket, and the only telekinetic in the Empire was Rune, a teenage villain who dressed up as a wizard. Myriad hoped that the last woman was someone besides Purity.

Still, if they were staying back, there was a good chance they couldn't take a hit as well as Hookwolf could.

That, or they were the team's trump card for when things started going bad. Myriad hoped they were just squishy.

Dammit! She needed to be smarter than she had been. She needed to know the powers of every villain in the city by heart and to be able to identify them by swarmsense. She needed to have her swarm _with_ her, and not scattered throughout the range of her abilities. She needed to be _prepared,_ but before she could be prepared for her next fight, she needed to survive this one.

She got a feel for the inside villains, not just their locations but their postures, which way they were facing—where their eyes were—and sent in her bugs.

Most of her bugs were fruit flies, house flies, moths, box elder bugs, and other insects that couldn't bite or sting, so Myriad used them as a distraction for the twelve humble hornets she had in her swarm. Twelve hornets, six people, one for each eye.

She heard them scream, and her swarm felt them thrash around, but some controlled their panic better than others. Cricket didn't panic at all, and instead came running out of the building straight toward her.

Myriad had just enough time to realize that playing dead wasn't working before Cricket jumped into the air and landed right on her broken arm. White-hot pain screamed through her so brightly, Myriad could barely feel Cricket slash her throat with her sickles.

Her costume stopped that at least, but at this rate, Myriad was going to throw up from the pain alone. She wanted to surrender, to give up, to do anything to make the pain stop ... but giving up had never helped before.

_She came after me to stop the swarm. Every Master is their own weak point. _Could she play dead again, and disperse the swarm to make the act look more convincing? No. Cricket could just roll her over on her stomach and ram one of her sickles through her skull.

_Don't get distracted._ She kept her swarm working on the three still in the building, biting them with anything that could hurt, all while bringing more bugs in from the edges of her range, but it was all so _slow_! Dragonflies could fly faster than a human sprinter, but most other flying bugs would struggle to keep up with a brisk walk. And ants? They were fast for their size, but were slower than most turtles.

Suddenly one of capes in the building became immune to her bugs. They still covered him, but they couldn't bite him any more than her bugs were able to bite Glory Girl. Another Changer? Did the Empire Eighty-Eight have someone who could harden their skin at will?

No, not a Changer, a Trump. Someone who could grant powers with a touch. What was her name again?

Cricket seemed to realize that she couldn't cut through Myriad's costume, so she put her sickles in her belt, knelt down on Myriad's chest, and began to strangle her.

WWW

Juggling capes, in Miss Militia's experience, was like juggling balls. She could handle two, and that was it. She shot Alabaster, fired at Hookwolf for four seconds until Alabaster restored himself, then shot him again.

Then Victor came charging out of the building, and he took rubber bullet after rubber bullet without flinching.

_Invulnerability? What a day._ Real bullets wouldn't slow him down much more than rubber ones, and he was too small and too fast to hit with artillery. She couldn't create Tinkertech weapons like containment foam with her power, and Cooper wasn't certified yet.

She shot a smoke bomb at him and climbed out of the wrecked van. Victor could have been an expert marksman with his powers—and he was—but he prefered to fight hand to hand. Either he wanted to avoid killing people unless his back was up against the wall—lip service to the unwritten rules—or he wanted to show off the fact that he didn't need a gun to fight. Or, more likely, he absorbed his enemies' skills more effectively at close range.

The smoke would barely slow him down more than the time she spent throwing the grenade, but every second counted when Othala's enhancements lasted minutes or less. She could either continue stalling until Victor's borrowed invulnerability wore off or back up arrived, or she could fight her way through Victor, Alabaster, and Hookwolf to try to take Rune and Othala hostage.

A cacophony of chirping crickets interrupted her, and she turned to find Cricket herself sitting on Myriad's chest, strangling the girl. Miss Militia spared a moment to fire a clip of rubber bullets at the villain before Victor came out of the smoke.

WWW

Myriad could breathe again as Cricket jumped off of her in response to Miss Militia's onslaught. Her arm screamed in pain every time she jostled it, but she forced herself to her feet.

_I can't give up. I can't back down. I can only ..._

Even now, Myriad was aware of every segment of the battle. She could sense Hookwolf slowly growing his metal body thicker and thicker in response to Miss Militia's fire, and the villain in white had already healed himself, though both of his guns had a few bugs in them sabotaging his weapons however they could. The two capes still inside had curled up in fetal positions with their faces covered, having apparently surrendered to her swarm.

That left the cape fighting Miss Militia—Myriad still couldn't remember his name, but he was temporarily bullet proof and knew karate—and _Cricket._

At that moment, Myriad hated Cricket more than anyone. The villain could have ended the fight in seconds, but instead she took it slow, _toying_ with her, making a game out of it. Being angry at someone for ineffectually trying to kill her was stupid, Myriad knew, but being strangled made it hard to think clearly.

As evidence to that fact, there were crickets everywhere. Why had she focused on summoning crickets? She didn't know; her vision had been going dark and she had felt like she was about to pass out when she decided to cover Cricket in crickets and have them start chirping.

It worked, but that was more due to dumb luck than smart planning. Myriad liked her second idea much better.

Half a dozen dragonflies landed on Cricket's head, which the villain ignored. Several hundred ants crawled off of them and covered her eyes, which demanded Cricket's _rapt_ attention. None of them had stingers, but they all had mandibles, and they set to work biting her. Myriad divided them into teams of three; two to pull the skin taut and the third to cut through it. Crickets climbed up to her ears and made as much noise as possible to deafen her.

But even blind and deaf, Cricket wasn't willing to lie down just yet. She wasn't a Brute from what Myriad had read about her, but judging by Cricket's vast collection of scars, she had faced worse than a few hundred determined bugs.

Cricket pulled off her mask—it wasn't doing anything for her secret identity anyway—and wiped the bugs off her face while Myriad tried to decide what to do next. Taser? No. Cricket was stronger and faster than she was, and she could just take the taser and use it on her. Pepper spray? Cricket was already blind, in pain, and, with Myriad's crickets, partially deaf. Making her blinder and in more pain wouldn't help. Her baton? Ha. Ha ha.

Yeah, she was screwed.

WWW

Armsmaster hated this city, but Brockton Bay was his, and it wasn't going away. Like cancer.

The engine of his motorcycle roared beneath him as he sped to the fighting ground, praying that he wasn't too late. Villains were most dangerous at two points in time. The most common was when they had nothing left to lose and wanted one last hurrah on their way out. Equally bad was when their gang no longer had any real competition and they had no reason to play nice.

Right now, both of those points described Hookwolf. He was the sort of villain that made Kaiser look reasonable. He was a murderer before he got his powers, and he was a murderer now. Some villains followed a loose code with the understanding that they would rather live in a world controlled by the heroes than by rival villains, but not Hookwolf. And now, with the ABB effectively obsolete, the Empire Eighty-Eight no longer had much reason to leave their enemies alive.

He thought of that as he rode down the street, his helmet feeding him info about the fastest route there. Myriad, who had been a cape for less than two weeks, and Miss Militia who, if he was being honest, kept the team running more than he did.

It was all he could do to breathe a sigh of relief when he arrived on the scene and saw them both still standing. That, and reform his halberd into an electric flail and knock Cricket off her feet.

The flail head was kinetically locked, so no matter how fast or slow it was going at the point of impact, it would strike with only the proper amount of force. According to his HUD, that meant three cracked ribs and subcutaneous bleeding. He dismounted his motorcycle, tossed a pair of handcuffs to Myriad, and made his way to Victor.

Victor had Miss Militia pinned to the ground with an arm twisted behind her back, but he got off her as soon as he saw him. Armsmaster shot a grappling hook at him, but he dodged.

Before Victor could try to run—_good luck with that_—he was swarmed by insects, especially around the eyes. That irritated Armsmaster. Good intentions were, well, _good_, but his equipment worked best with reduced variables.

His grappling hook wrapped around Victor's legs this time, and Armsmaster dragged the villain towards him and restrained him. His HUD flashed, alerting him that someone was trying—and failing—to breach his psychic shields. As long as Victor wasn't endowed with super strength or could fly, he'd stay put until Armsmaster dealt with the rest of the villains.

Alabaster was easy. The man pointed his guns at Armsmaster, but they wouldn't fire. Out of ammo? Maybe, but there were also bugs swarming the inside of the barrels, so perhaps Myriad had something to do with it.

Hookwolf was another matter entirely. He had been holding back, letting Victor have his fun, but he charged at Armsmaster like a large, angry poodle attacking a mailman.

A predictable move. Armsmaster sidestepped, activated his halberd's plasma setting, and seared through Hookwolf's right arm. Molten steel splattered across the street and Hookwolf fell into a roll.

"There's probably a circumstantially appropriate pun I could quip about offering you a hand," Armsmaster said as Hookwolf rose to his remaining three feet. "But I don't condone cruelty to animals, so I'll keep it to myself."

As a Changer, Hookwolf's flesh and blood body was safe somewhere in the middle of the wolf. Probably. If it turned out that Armsmaster had accidentally maimed a mass murderer, he'd just have to learn to deal with it.

He'd seen recordings of other capes fighting Hookwolf. Hell, he'd recorded _himself _fighting Hookwolf, and he ran every last bit of data through countless programs to create his masterpiece. With his combat predictor, he knew what his opponent was going to do before they did.

_This ends today, villain._

But then a group of dragonflies landed on Hookwolf's metallic face and unloaded countless smaller insects that crawled into the eye holes of the villains outer layer. And with that, his combat predictor started to lag.

_Insufficient data._

He had seen Hookwolf fight countless times, but he had never studied his reaction to a coordinated attack by a swarm of insects.

What would he do? Fight? Flight? Something else? Hookwolf lunged to the side. Going after Miss Militia for a hostage? Armsmaster shot out his grappling hook to stop him, but he missed because Hookwolf was running down the street.

_After Myriad?_ He built the combat predictor so he could be _certain_ of something in a fight, but now he was back to gambling with people's lives. He retracted the grappling hook and took aim just in time to see Hookwolf ignore Myriad entirely, trample his motorcycle—_bastard_—and pick up Cricket almost tenderly in his metal jaws before running down the street.

By the time his predictor could calculate through the different variables again, Hookwolf was already out of range. _Well, I suppose there are still a few bugs to work out._ He could try to make chase, but he already had two heroes who needed medical attention and more than enough villains that needed to be secured. He rested his halberd over his shoulder and fired the grappling hook at Alabaster, who had been trying to get away. After restraining him he went on to deal with Othala, Rune, and the two henchmen. Then he got down to the greater part of his job.

Anyone with powers could be a hero, but only a select few could lead.

"What the hell just happened?" he demanded, returning to Miss Militia. "We put Bakuda away so we _wouldn't _have to worry about military grade weapons on the city streets."

Miss Militia stared ahead, her eyes unfocused. "I apologize. The situation got away from us. I'll take full responsibility for the damages."

_Damages._ It would be damages if they were lucky. They could pin the claw marks on the road and sidewalk on Hookwolf, but the bullet holes that went through brick walls like they were paper? That was was Miss Militia.

"You don't _get_ that option, Militia. Everything you do reflects on the team." _On me._ The sharks had smelled blood in the water when Lung had nearly died in custody, and Armsmaster knew that those same sharks would ignore the four Empire capes they arrested today in favor of the several thousand dollars worth of property damage. Hell, even if they had managed to capture all six, the only thing Piggot would ask them about was why they were treating a populated city like a warzone.

The fact that it _was _a warzone and the alternative was to lay down and die never seemed to faze her.

He took another look at Miss Militia, noticing something off about her. His visual algorithms could diagnose most injuries, but he had to see them happen for it to work. Was she hurt? He knew she could handle the stress of combat better than this, but she had been far too close to Victor when he arrived, and Armsmaster didn't know how much he had taken from her.

He wondered if he was being too hard on her. Hadn't he been frustrated with his own superiors for disregarding years of exemplary service to focus on his one mistake? A mistake that wasn't even his?

_Well, it's not that bad,_ he wanted to say. _I'm sure you did your best, and at least we got four of the villains. Everyone has off days. _

"I'm going to check to see if there are any injured civilians in the surrounding buildings," he said instead. "Keep an eye on the prisoners until we can get them contained."

WWW

Several PRT vans arrived, loaded up the four villains, and sprayed them with containment foam. Myriad had never seen the foam in action before, and normally she would have been a lot more interested, but right now she was just worn out. She wasn't the only one. The PRT trooper who had driven them here had taken off her helmet and had lit up a cigarette with frantic desperation. She barely looked old enough to smoke, but it seemed like an old habit already.

And then there was Miss Militia. She seemed distant now, hollow. Still, that didn't stop her from sitting down on the curb next to Myriad to check on her.

"How are you feeling?"

Myriad cradled her broken arm in her lap. At least, she hoped it was only broken. She replayed the moment in her head where Hookwolf appeared above her, a sky full of teeth, and flung her back and forth like she was a chew toy.

"I've had worse days," she said instead. Neither of her arms had ever been that spectacular to begin with, and she only needed her bugs to fight. It hurt like hell, but pain was only pain.

"You did good today. Spectacular, and not just for a rookie."

It felt good to hear her say that, but Myriad wondered if that was something heroes always said to new members, especially if they got injured. "Is it always like this?"

Miss Militia shook her head. "There's no _always_ in this job. The situation is always in flux. The Empire grows bolder as what's left of the ABB withdraws. But the worst scenario is one where we are caught off guard, and we still came out ahead."

Myriad thought about that. The ABB was on the decline mostly because Myriad herself fought Lung and Bakuda, so if the Empire was gaining power, that was on her. _Bakuda stepped up because I helped catch Lung. The Empire stepped up because I helped catch Bakuda. _It was like the story of the little old lady who swallowed a fly, a nursery rhyme about the dangers of escalation if she had ever heard one.

_I don't know why I swallowed a fly. Perhaps I'll die._

She was trapped, in a way. She couldn't walk way from the cape scene after helping to incite a gang war, but if she managed to stay and _win_? Would that just clear the stage for someone worse? Because, as weird as it was to say it, the world was full of worse people than just nazis.

_The only thing the good people are good at is overthrowing the bad people. And you're good at that, I'll grant you. But the trouble is that it's the only thing you're good at._

She didn't want to think about that. "Honestly I'm just worried about what I'm going to tell my dad." That was a lie. She was a master multitasker, incapable of worrying about less than ten things at once. "A broken arm isn't something I can hide."

Miss Militia looked at her. "Does he not know?"

She hesitated. "I'm not required to tell him, right? I checked the paperwork, and ..."

"Required? No, but it is encouraged. There were too many situations where a cape's parents gossipped too much about their child's secret identity and at least one where the parents were official super villains—Team Ferocity, if you've heard of them. These days, the PRT no longer forces its junior heroes to come out to their family members, but that's just the thing, isn't it? You shouldn't _be_ forced. You should recognize that this isn't a game we're playing. We try to keep each other safe, but we're not always in control. You got hurt today. Someday you might get killed. The truth will come out then, if not before. It's up to you if you want your father to bury a stranger."

WWW

Taylor could say this about being a state sponsored hero: it came with a stellar health plan. Of course, the best care money could buy was still loads worse than being healthy.

Her costume was the only reason her arm hadn't been torn off in the fight, but afterwards it only caused her trouble. The doctors couldn't examine her injury with it on, and her arm was too swollen for her to take her suit off without unbearable pain. They tried to cut it off, but that was a dead end unless they wanted to use a bone saw, and eventually they called in Vista.

Vista was able to expand her costume so she could slip out of it, and when Taylor was able to see her arm for the first time it looked like a slab of ground beef.

Supposedly, that was good news. It if was something as simple as a broken bone, they'd put her in a cast and let her heal normally, and maybe stick her with console duty for the next couple of weeks. Since her injuries were so much worse, she got to be treated by Panacea.

Eventually. The world's greatest healer had something of a tight schedule, so the doctors wrapped her arm in bandages and wrapped the bandages in a cast, the medical equivalent of holding a house together with duct tape. In a day or two, Panacea would squeeze her in and Taylor would be as good as new. Heck, she might even have two working ears again.

Until then, she had pain killers. She took one, and it made her feel good. Really good. Better than she had felt in a long time. She flushed the rest down the toilet after she got home. She could deal with a dull, throbbing ache, but an opiate addiction scared her.

After that, she waited for her dad to come home, wondering what she was going to tell him, thinking about what Miss Militia had told her.

_If you knew what I was doing, you'd want me to stop, thinking that I could. _And she could stop. Of course she could. There was no reason why she couldn't.

_But if I fought you on it, you'd let me keep being a hero. You wouldn't like it, and you would destroy yourself day and night worrying about me, but you'd swallow your misery just like I do._

She considered the alternatives. She could lie, and keep on lying. She had gotten involved in a cape fight today, which was true, but only as a bystander. The heroes had blamed themselves for letting her get hurt, so they got her medical treatment like the paragons of virtue that they were. And it wasn't even that bad, just a hairline fracture that an overzealous doctor had found, and she could get the cast off in a day or two.

She heard the door open. "Taylor, I'm home."

After that, well, Taylor had a new job working as a janitor. You get strange hours as a janitor, so her dad would understand if she was gone. And she had friends, fake friends that invited her to spend the night or hang out. That wouldn't be _too_ unbelievable, right?

She got up and opened the door. It would be hard at first, but it would get _easier._ Eventually, she wouldn't even need to try. Her dad would barely know her after a year or two, but he wouldn't have to worry about a thing.

"Hey, Dad," she said, stepping out of her room.

He did a double take as soon as he saw her. "Taylor," he said. "What happened to your arm?"

"Dad, I ..." She opened her mouth and closed it again. "I have to tell you something. I'm a cape."

WWW

A/n And that's the end of chapter eight. I really do not have an easy time writing fight scenes. Fortunately, that is the last fight scene that will appear in this story.

Until the next one. And the one after that. And the one after that. Seriously, capes need to find a better way of solving conflicts than trying to kill each other. They could, like, start a pun war or something. Those _never_ devolve into violence.

It's kind of weird that the woman who grew up as a child soldier is the most reliable one around, and that honestly makes Miss Militia hard to write. I mean, where's the neurosis? What am I supposed to base her off of? Captain America? Well, maybe. Armsmaster was comparatively a piece of cake.

For everyone who wanted to see Shadow Stalker get some well-deserved comeuppance, you'll have to wait at least a little bit longer. The next chapter will, if everything goes according to plan (and it always does), focus more on Vista.

Anyway, I would like to thank everyone who left a review letting me know what you thought. The further this story goes, the better idea I have of where I'm going with it, and you guys help with that.

Finally, and most of all, I would like to thank Noneofit for betaing this chapter and reading it when it was at its worst. He was also able to teach me a lot about guns, like how shooting something at point blank range with a rocket launcher would kill you and that Miss Militia shouldn't do it. Who knew?


	9. Chapter 9

The Other Way

Chapter Nine

_Danny stared at the cast on Taylor's arm for a long moment before looking up at her. He was taller than she was, but she stood halfway up the staircase. It was ... hard, looking at her these days. Sometimes he saw the baby girl she used to be, learning to walk, learning to fall _forward _instead of falling down. _

_At other times, he saw Annette._

"_What?"_

WWW

Taylor always hated Winslow High, but today her hatred was something new. Before, she had been _part_ of the system, the bottom rung of the social ladder, a foundational piece for people better connected and with better social skills to step on.

She had broken free from that role and had been replaced in a day. That would be Charlotte's burden until Taylor took the whole system and flipped it upside down. She wasn't sure how just yet, but the worst thing she could do was nothing.

She arrived early and roamed the halls. Normally she went to school as late as she could without getting marked as tardy, or she would hurry to homeroom as fast as possible to claim sanctuary in Mrs. Knott's computer class. But today she set to work making sure that she wouldn't be caught off guard.

She kept her eyes out for her old bullies, and had a house fly land on each one she found. For the trio, Emma, Sophia, and Madison, she planted a tick on each one of them, or at least their clothes. She watched out for the major gangs, too. The gang members weren't subtle, and usually advertised with tattoos or a specific color coordination. The Empire Eighty-Eight got ants, the Azn Bad Boys got termites, and Skidmark's gang, called the Merchants, got weevils.

She wasn't sure of how she managed to keep track of over two hundred people at once, but it was all there in her head, her swarm marking her enemies by their own unique biologies. Taylor didn't know how many rules she was breaking by doing this. She wasn't hurting anyone—yet—but ever since she opened the PRT handbook on their regulations, she felt like she needed to file an official request form and consult a ten-day weather forecast before making a butterfly flap its wings.

Charlotte got a ladybug. Taylor didn't smile when they saw each other. Sure, they were in this together, but what they were together _in _was the pit of hell and that wasn't worth smiling about.

"Taylor!" she said. "What happened to your arm?"

Taylor looked down at her cast, partially to avoid making eye contact while she came up with a lie. "Um, oh. Yeah. You know, you're the first person to mention it."

"Huh. So what happened?"

Even a distorted version of the truth, that she had gotten caught up in a cape fight, was interesting enough to be spread around. A car accident was sufficiently mundane, but too serious. "A bike accident."

"You fell off your bike?"

Taylor didn't own a bike, and if Charlotte ever came over to her house, her web of lies might unravel. "No, someone hit me with theirs. I was on the sidewalk and he crashed into me. Um, it's not as serious as it looks." It was a massive bruise filled with pudding and suffering. "It's just sprained. I'll probably get it taken off tomorrow."

Charlotte tilted her head. "You got a cast on your arm for a sprain?"

Before Taylor could respond, Charlotte stumbled over an outstretched foot. Taylor caught her with her good arm, spotted the offending foot, followed up the offending leg, and slammed the offending person against a nearby wall.

"Try something like that _again_," she hissed, "and I will _murder_ you!"

WWW

_I'm a cape," she said again. She took a deep breath. "I have powers, a costume, the works."_

_Danny blinked slowly, trying to make sense of things. The last time he had seen his daughter in a costume was the last time she had gone Trick or Treating for Halloween, dressed up as Alexandria. The idea of her getting powers was a possibility, but in the same way that winning the lottery was a possibility. _

"_Show me."_

_She swallowed, and her face looked paler than usual. A buzzing arose out of the background noise of the world and grew louder as a mass of flies gathered in front of him, forming a barrier between him and his little girl._

"_I can control bugs."_

WWW

The girl's name was Julia, and while she wasn't one of the main three, she had always been eager to join in on their games. There weren't any ticks around, so apparently the girl had decided to show some initiative.

Now she was afraid, her usually smug blue eyes growing wide.

"What the hell, Hebert?" another girl said. Tiffany. Taylor ignored her. A light concentration of gnats in the air would warn her if anyone came up behind her. Everyone except for Tiffany kept their distance, interested in case a fight broke out. But without Emma, Sophia, or Madison to encourage their minions, that wasn't going to happen.

Taylor kept her eyes focused on Julia until her will broke.

_Divide. Conquer._

_Isolate. Annihilate._

"Do you understand me?" she whispered.

Julia gave a timid nod, and Taylor released her.

"_Someone_ forgot to take her chill pill today," Tiffany said.

Taylor turned slowly toward her and looked her dead in the eye until Tiffany looked away. It didn't take long, possibly because of the bugs that were flying too close to the girl's eyes, but the effect was the same.

Taylor went back to Charlotte's side and walked down the hall with her, and the rest of the crowd went their own ways after seeing that there wasn't going to be anymore entertainment.

"What was _that_?" Charlotte asked.

"You'll get used to that sort of thing," Taylor explained. "They'll trip you, laugh when you fall, then blame you for being clumsy. I used to spend all day with my head down so they wouldn't catch me off guard, but it's better to just keep track of everyone in their group so you can avoid them entirely."

"Right. The tripping thing. That was exactly what I was asking about."

WWW

_Danny stared at the swarm. There was a synchronization to the bugs' movements that was almost hypnotic to watch. He stared at his daughter through the haze. "Taylor, you can't fight criminals with _bugs_! They have _guns_!"_

_Taylor's face soured and the swarm between them grew louder, as though angry. "Dad, since I started going out, I've helped capture Lung, Bakuda, Cricket, Victor, Alabaster, Rune, and Othella." She counted off the names on her fingers. "And all I got in return was a broken arm. I think that's pretty good."_

_Danny didn't follow the cape scene, not like Taylor did, but he recognized a cape name when he heard one. She wasn't just going after criminals. She was going after villains._

WWW

Taylor knew something was off the moment she stepped into homeroom. Mrs. Knott was by far her favorite teacher—not that that was saying much. Heck, on a scale of one to ten, Mr. Gladly was a negative three. Still, Mrs. Knott gave her the space she needed, and more than that, she seemed to appreciate Taylor for what she was—a quiet girl who did her work without bothering anyone.

But today, Mrs. Knott looked at her like she had never seen Taylor before in her life. There was something calculating in her expression, and then, most peculiar of all, she nodded to her as though in respect.

The same thing continued throughout her morning. Mr. Quinlan, who probably couldn't remember her name without checking his seating chart, gave a double take when he saw her. It wasn't until her world studies class with Mr. Gladly when it all came together.

Mr. Gladly, "everyone's friend," smiled at her with the same plastic smile that he greeted everyone with, then he gave her the most obvious of conspiratorial winks. That unsettled her so much, she could barely appreciate how Julia had chosen the furthest seat from her available.

There wasn't a group project today, fortunately, but throughout the lecture (about the organization and beginning years of the Protectorate, with three Triumverate action figures as visual aids), Mr. Gladly kept on smiling at her, as though he were speaking to her directly and the rest of the class were bystanders. Taylor responded by staring fixedly at the wall and pretending that she wasn't there.

And in a way, she wasn't. Mentally, she was with her swarm all over the school. Most of her attention was on Charlotte, but she also had her bugs performing a systematic locker search, after having tagged every gang member's locker she could with a box elder bug. She kept notes in the same code she developed months ago when she decided to become a cape whenever she found something worth remembering. It would take weeks to get through every locker in the school, but as long as she had to be here, she might as well make the most of it.

The bell could not ring soon enough. When it did, Taylor gathered up her things to meet up with Charlotte. The next period was lunch, and the cafeteria had too many dangers that Charlotte wouldn't be watching out for.

"Taylor, could I have a word?" Mr. Gladly said as she started to leave.

Taylor hesitated. On the other side of the school, Charlotte left her own classroom and was heading toward her locker. It had been broken into, and Taylor had been hoping to reach her before she found out about it.

Still, she couldn't come up with an excuse to leave. "Okay." She waited as the rest of the students filed out, some of them glancing back at her as though wondering if she was in trouble. Maybe she was.

"How are you feeling?" he said cheerfully after they were alone.

"Fine." _What do you want?_

"I see you broke your arm."

"Yes." _Stop making small talk and get to the point._

He took a deep breath and seemed to be able to read her blatantly obvious mood. "Well, I just wanted to congratulate you on your new job."

She stopped. "What?"

"You know." He smiled knowingly. "Your new job. Is that where you hurt your arm? Don't answer that, I'm not supposed to pry. But I just wanted you to know that I understand how hard it can be to juggle work and school, especially with a job as demanding as yours. And if there's anything I can do to make your life at school easier, just let me know."

She stared numbly at him, fitting the pieces together. She knew that the schools worked together with the Wards program, but to have her face rubbed in it like this ... it made her feel sick. No, not sick. _Angry._ It had taken every ounce of her courage to come out to her dad, and then to have her secret identity _pimped out_ to the entire faculty ...

She grit her teeth. "You really want to know how you can help me, Mr. Gladly?"

WWW

"_That's dangerous." Danny felt like an idiot as soon as he said it. _

_She shrugged, then winced as the action jostled her broken arm. "And?"_

_He hesitated. "And ... and I don't want you getting hurt!"_

_Her eyes narrowed. "You're fine with me going to school. And you _know _what's happening to me there!"_

_He wasn't fine with her going to school. Every morning he worried that he'd get another call like the one he got in January. "That's different," he said lamely._

WWW

"You're always so eager to help people who don't need it," Taylor said, gripping the straps of her backpack. "Always happy to help when it doesn't cost you anything."

Mr. Gladly hesitated. "I mean, I'm just offering," he said. "If you don't need anything ..."

"Oh, I needed your help, Mr. Gladly. I needed it since the start of the school year, but you were too busy making life easier for people who already had it easy." _Helping the people who were hurting me._

On the other side of the school, Charlotte opened her locker and found it empty. Taylor didn't have enough bugs around to pick up the finer details, but she thought she picked up a scream as she kicked the metal frame in front of her. Meanwhile, all three ticks were close enough to enjoy the show.

Dammit, Taylor needed to be _there,_ not here! "You've let down everyone who's been depending on you. You want to help me _now_? I pray to God you die alone, because anyone would have to be a fool to rely on you."

WWW

"_How?" Taylor demanded. "How is it different?"_

_The obvious answer that super villains were more dangerous than bullies didn't hold water. He knew what the bullies had done to her, how they had worn her down and tore her up. Super villains could only hurt her on the outside. The easy answer, that skipping school was against the law, was even worse. If he thought that committing high treason could help his little girl, he'd do it in a heartbeat._

"_Because you can get through it!" he said, taking a step forward up the stairs. He had expected the swarm to get out of his way, but instead the bugs began landing on him. He did his best to ignore them. "I know that life's rough for you now, but I don't want a few bad choices to hold you back in the future. You can get through this, Taylor, and you'll be able to do great things when this is over."_

_Taylor stared at him. "Don't you get it, Dad?" she said softly. "I can do great things _now."

WWW

Taylor caught up with Charlotte before she made it to the cafeteria. She had a sour look on her face, but Charlotte's expression lightened a bit when she saw her.

"Rough day?" Taylor asked.

Charlotte let out a sigh. "You would not believe it."

"I might."

She hesitated. "I guess you would. Well, someone broke into my locker. Cleared out the whole thing. Textbooks, my backpack, my jacket, everything."

Taylor nodded, but she already knew that. She had practically watched it happen. She suspected that Sophia had done the deed, but she hadn't verified anything. Later on, though, Taylor planned to fish Charlotte's backpack out of the garbage bin in the girl's bathroom and pretend that she had found in on accident. Charlotte might grow suspicious if Taylor did that sort of thing too often, but dammit, Taylor wished that she'd had someone looking out for _her_ when she had been Victim Number One.

"The school will charge you for the textbooks too," Taylor said. "And I guarantee that they not investigate who stole them at all."

Charlotte stared at her. "Why not?"

Taylor shrugged. "Investigations take a lot of time and effort. Victim blaming doesn't. I haven't used my locker since January."

She nodded. "That makes sense." Then she paused. "Oh. Sorry."

Taylor shrugged again. "It doesn't matter. You shouldn't go to the cafeteria."

Charlotte blinked. "What?"

"It's a crowd of people. You can do anything you want in a crowd and get away with it. You'll have food thrown at you before you even sit down."

"Really?"

Taylor nodded. "I haven't used the cafeteria since my freshman year."

"But ..." Charlotte stared at the cafeteria doors, looking through them.

"Charlotte, I've been putting up with this for a year and a half. There's a time to endure, and a time to avoid. All of your enemies are in there." Taylor knew their exact locations. "One of them alone will try to hurt you just because she's bored. All of them together will compete to see who can hurt you the most."

Still Charlotte hesitated, as though hoping that if she _pretended_ that everything was alright, it would be. Taylor had been there. Her life had changed so drastically, so horribly that all she had was desperate fantasy.

"Besides," she said more gently, "the cafeteria food is horrible, and I have a pita wrap in my backpack you can have."

WWW

"_I can do things _now," _she said again. "Do you know how long it's been since I could say that? I don't learn anything at school, I just suffer there. Then all I do at home is dreading going back to school. There's always been the 'plan' to graduate, go to college, and maybe have a life where everyone around me isn't a complete monster, but I won't make it that long! And now, I don't have to."_

_Danny looked at her helplessly. "But ... but can't you let the heroes deal with them? The other heroes, I mean?"_

"_But that's just the thing," she said. "They _can't_."_

WWW

They sat together on a bus stop bench. The school was still in range, so Taylor kept track of the Trio, their lackeys, and the gangs while Charlotte ate her pita wrap. The lunch rush was just beginning, but the street they were on was fairly quiet.

"I mean," Charlotte said, "the worst thing, well, not the worst thing, but one of them, is I never know if it's _them_, or if I'm just being paranoid. Like, just today my bio teacher told me I didn't turn in my assignment yesterday, and I know I did, so I don't know if Mrs. Churchton lost it or if this was a devious act of sabotage by the Local Bully League."

"What period was this?"

"Biology? Third."

Third period. Taylor had third period with Mr. Quinlan and Emma. "And you turn papers in by passing them down the row?"

Charlotte nodded as she took a bite.

"Are Sophia or Madison in your class?" She already knew the answer to that, but she had to pretend like she didn't.

"Sophia is, but she's on the other side of the room."

"Who sits two desks in front of you?"

Charlotte thought for a moment. "A girl named Alison. Alison ... Stewart? Stackton? She's blonde. Does that help?"

Whoever it was, she'd had a fly on her. "You always have to look out for whoever's two desks in front of you. Any later and they'll get the papers mixed up, any sooner and you'll see them steal it. See if you can get a seat change. Until then, skip the line and turn your homework in in person."

Charlotte shook her head. "This whole thing is messed up. I mean, how long are they going to keep on doing this?" She looked at Taylor, and then she suddenly looked away, embarrassed. "Sorry. You probably don't want to hear me whine about this, after, you know ..."

_Don't apologize. Do you have any idea what you being here means to me? You could never dream how long and how much I've wanted someone who could understand, just a little bit, what I've been through._

"That's okay," Taylor said instead. "It helps to talk."

Charlotte fell silent for a moment, the pita wrap half eaten in her hands. "Hey, Taylor? Why are you doing this for me? And don't give me any nonsense about how I would do the same thing if our positions were reversed, because they _were_ reversed last week and I didn't do a thing."

A large truck whizzed by them, giving Taylor a moment to gather her thoughts. "You know, I really hated you last week. I hated you as much as I hated Emma, Sophia, or anyone else that was actively trying to hurt me. For the last year I was thinking, how hard would it be for just _one _person to step in and say, 'This isn't right, this shouldn't be happening?' But every last one of you from the students to the teachers and the goddamn _principal_ looked the other way and _let it happen._

"But that was a week ago, and you're not letting it happen anymore, you're the one it's happening too. And ... and if I were to ignore it like everyone else when you need help like I needed it, then _I'd_ be the one letting it happen."

Charlotte stared off into the distance. "Back in January when you, you know, we wanted to do something, me and my friends. We'd tell a teacher or something, I don't know. But Emma Barnes must have gotten wind of it—I swear the girl has a working spy network or something—because she came over and started chatting with us one day.

"I always knew her as one of the cool kids, but that was the first time I ever really talked to her, and let me tell you, she freaked me out. It was like she grew up ripping the wings off butterflies and never figured out that people were any different. It was the way she looked at you, like she'd strike just before you were ready for her and hurt you just a little bit more than you could handle.

"Then she started talking about the locker incident, all cold eyes and bright smiles, and said that the school had it handled and that smart girls like us didn't need to get involved." Charlotte took a deep breath. "I think we were all looking for an excuse to back down, and she gave it to us."

Taylor wasn't sure what to think about that. It helped, a little, to know that people had been frightened into doing nothing instead of that they were just lazy, but not much. The fact that Emma personally worked to smooth things over during the aftermath was interesting, but not entirely helpful.

"Well, even if you did tell someone, I doubt much would have happened," Taylor said. "The school doesn't have a witness protection program, and Winslow really loves their track stars."

"And I think Emma's father is like a lawyer or something," Charlotte added.

"Right, that too."

"But I could do something now, couldn't I? I don't have anything to lose anymore, and I don't think there's a statute of limitations on biological warfare."

Taylor shook her head. "The rest of the evidence has expired." _And you have no idea how much more you have left to lose._

"Okay, we'll skip the authorities and go directly to the bullies. Scare them off."

Myriad could be flat out terrifying, but Taylor Hebert? "I don't see that working, to be honest."

Charlotte gave her an incredulous look. "Seriously? I saw what you did to Julia today."

Taylor thought back to that morning. "I barely did anything to her."

"And she nearly wet herself. I mean, come on, you know what people say about you."

_That I should chug a gallon of bleach and die. That I'm stupid, ugly, and smell bad. That I should give up on school so the rest of them don't have to look at me anymore. _No. That was what they said _to_ her. "What do they say about me?"

Charlotte hesitated. "Well, you know. We all saw you get carted away by the police and the paramedics. We all knew what had happened to you. Most of us thought that that you were going to drop out or switch schools, and if you came back at all it would be with a sawed off shotgun. Then you did come back, and it was like the whole thing didn't even phase you."

It did phase her. It did a lot more than that. It broke her, changed her, and she came back anyway because ... because ...

"Kids throw rocks at hornet nests because they _know_ it's a bad idea," Charlotte continued. "I don't think it would take much to make them afraid of you. I think most of them already are. And if they're not ..." She shrugged. "Maybe they should be."

WWW

"_I could bring up the statistics," Taylor said, "tell you how much the villains outnumber the heroes, maybe quote some homicide rates. I could tell you that when Bakuda surgically implanted bombs into over a hundred people that she could set off with her big toe, the PRT had just enough resources to wait for her to get tired of killing people. But the thing is, Dad, the heroes aren't winning. They can make people feel safe, sure, go on camera, put on a show, but they're outnumbered, outmatched, and they _need _me."_

_Danny stared at his daughter, gripping the banister. Taylor had been doubly cursed by both her parents, inheriting the most dangerous traits of both. Danny had given her his awkward gracelessness, his insecurities, and, worst of all, his temper. Oh, his temper. His own father had been nothing but temper, temper and fists. Danny had always been so worried about what he had given her, he sometimes forgot what Taylor had gotten from her mother. _

_Annette had been born with the soul of a crusader. She'd had a focus that excluded all else and threw herself into a cause no matter what the cost, whether it was a crusade against ignorance, misogyny, or the HOA. _

They need me.

_A lie. _She _needed _them _to need her. After they'd had Taylor, Annette had settled down mostly, but as Taylor grew she needed her mother less and less, and Annette began to seek out another cause to satisfy her._

_The whole time they had known each other, his anger and her crusade had clashed only once. That had been four years ago, and while he had never raised his fist against her, his words had killed her in every way that mattered._

_Danny relived that night every day since, remembering all the things that he shouldn't have said, and the one thing that he should have. He'd give anything to go back and redo that conversation._

WWW

Taylor sat in the principal's office, looking up at Blackwell. Blackwell looked imposing behind her desk, but it was an illusion. They were about the same height; Blackwell just had a higher chair. When she had been younger, Taylor used to think that there would be more substance to the adult world, but instead it was just a more convincing form of posturing.

"Do you know why you're here, Taylor?"

Taylor had been planning on speaking with the principal soon, but not this soon. At the beginning of her art class she had been sent down, at least a week ahead of schedule.

She considered Blackwell's question. So far that day, she'd said some overly honest things to Julia, said some even more honest things to Mr. Gladly, technically ditched school, though only for the lunch period, and used her parahuman abilities to perform an unsanctioned search on a large portion of the student body.

"I wouldn't want to waste your time guessing, Principal."

Blackwell gave her a narrow look. "A glib tongue doesn't suit you, Taylor." _If that counts as glib to you, then you are truly within the inner circles of hell._ "I'll make this simple for you. Did you or did you not threaten one of your teachers today?"

Ah. So this was about the Gladly affair. Blackwell didn't mention him by name, of course. That was Taylor's job, which Blackwell could then take as an admission of guilt. She didn't tell Taylor what she was being accused of at first for the same reason.

But Taylor hadn't threatened him. She had been candid with him, sure, but ... but that was the play, wasn't it? She was supposed to present her alibi of a lesser crime to absolve her of the greater crime, and then get punished for the lesser crime that she just confessed to.

"Well?"

She couldn't go on the defensive. That was like giving up, but slower. She had only one option left.

"Mr. Gladly was careless with confidential information," Taylor said. "We wear masks for a reason, Principal, and our identities are only given out on a need to know basis under the premise that those informed will be discreet. And yet today while discussing capes in class he frequently singled me out, and he held me back after the bell rang to discuss my new job.

"That's the sort of information that has gotten heroes killed, Mrs. Blackwell, and he was treating it like a game. I could have, of course, gone through the official channels, but Director Piggot doesn't like to be bothered with low level problems, and has given me permission to deal with such problems however I see fit." That was, at best, a liberal interpretation of the director's command to stop wasting her time, but it was hardly Taylor's fault if Piggot was vague. "So I disciplined him."

Blackwell's eyes widened. "You did what?"

"I hurt his feelings," she clarified. "He's a very sensitive man. I honestly don't know where he got the idea that I threatened him, but again, he's very sensitive."

Blackwell took a deep breath. "You do not have the authority to discipline teachers, Taylor, regardless of your current occupation."

"No," she agreed. "But I do have the authority to file an official complaint, make a formal accusation, and rain down red tape like the wrath of a bureaucratic god upon the entire school. Maybe get Mr. Gladly arrested for reckless endangerment." Huh. That idea was starting to sound pretty good. Well, it was too late for that now. "But speaking of my current occupation, I met Shadow Stalker."

Taylor had checked with her bugs. The only person nearby was the principal's secretary, and she was too far away to hear anything. Blackwell hesitated. "Oh?"

Taylor nodded. "And that was a surprise, let me tell you."

Blackwell met her gaze. She didn't even look embarrassed. "She's not whom I would chosen. I take it you would not have chosen her either."

That was putting it lightly. "She's a monster."

She raised an eyebrow at that. "She has a discipline problem, certainly, but—"

"January," Taylor snapped, trying—and failing—to keep her voice calm. "The first day back from break. The _locker._ That was her."

"I see." She didn't sound surprised, but maybe Taylor was reading too much into her tone. "Are you making a formal accusation?"

She let out a bitter laugh. "A formal accusation? Can you imagine what would have happened if I had done that at the beginning of the year? Me, a nobody with no proof, no friends, and no witnesses—despite the hundred people who saw it happen—against Winslow High's favorite little monster? What do you _think_ would have happened?"

"And you think that this is because of her position on the Wards team." It wasn't a question.

"Am I wrong?"

"Yes," she said flatly. "I don't know how well you understand how the Wards program works with the schools, Ms. Hebert, but if anything the Wards are held doubly accountable for their actions. If you get detention, you can't patrol. When you're suspended, you're benched."

"The same goes for when you're failing classes," Taylor finished. "I know, and it's idiotic. Sorry, but it is. The teachers aren't going to report a _hero_, not when it means that there's one less cape stopping bad guys. The heroes might as well be holding the world hostage; no one's going to get in our way when we're the one's keeping people safe."

"Perhaps," she admitted. _Finally._ "But you can't blame us for that. I have to look out for everyone, and there is a strong gang presence in this school. We don't have a budget for security guards, cameras last about a day before they are vandalized beyond repair, and we haven't had a working metal detector in years. In the event of a school shooter or worse, Shadow Stalker could arrive long before any of the other heroes. So if some of the teachers are grateful that she has chosen to stay here instead of transfering to Arcadia with the rest of the Wards ..." She waved her hand in a way that conveyed the same emotion as a shrug.

"I see. So she's your one girl security system." Taylor paused for a moment, trying to remember something. "Wasn't there a school shooting in Maryland last month? No capes, just someone with a loaded gun and an unloaded mind. Four dead, three injured. It makes sense that you would be concerned with something like that. I makes sense that you would make sacrifices for the greater good."

Blackwell hesitated, as though trying to decide if Taylor's tone was sarcastic.

"You know, when I first got my powers, I thought about becoming a hero, but that wasn't the _only_ thing I thought about. Sometimes I would think about bringing my bugs to school with me and taking ... well, not quite justice, but justice rounded to the nearest whole number. About a thousand people go to this school. Finding five thousand black widows is a walk in the park for me." She narrowed her eyes. "You _weren't_ making sacrifices for the greater good, you were sacrificing _me_ for the greater good, and you got _lucky_."

She felt her bugs converging on her location, but she didn't send them away. Why should she? All her secrets had been stolen from her; she had nothing left to hide.

"Are you _threatening _me, Ms. Hebert?" She was trying to sound indignant, but her voice came out as scared.

_These people are already afraid of me,_ she thought. _And if not, maybe they should be._

"No, I'm criticizing you." Taylor shook her head. "Why is it that you people can never tell the difference?"

Blackwell's eye twitched. "There's a centipede on your face."

Was there? Huh. "I brought enough for everybody."

"Now that _was_ a threat."

"No, that was an offer." She cocked her head. "Didn't you say that the school didn't have enough resources to look out for everyone? You haven't _used_ all your resources. You can't afford security cameras? Well _that's what I am._ Every bug under my control is a tiny camera only I can use, and I _have_ brought enough for everybody."

Blackwell frowned thoughtfully. "In my experience, it's best for the heroes to leave their capes at home."

"Your experience is Shadow Stalker. And she's not the sort of hero you would have chosen. I spent the day surveilling the gangs, people with Empire Eighty-Eight tattoos or Azn Bad Boy colors. Already I have identified seven lockers with drugs in them." The lockers were school property, not private property. She didn't need a search warrant for them, but she probably needed the principal's permission to do anything with it. "If you wait another week, we might be able to curb the gang presence that has you worried."

She was grossly exaggerating. Right now her bugs couldn't reliably tell the difference between coffee and cocaine, but she doubted that very many white boys with shaved heads and alliterative tattoos came to school with coffee powder in a plastic bag. Still, she had been practicing and the PRT easily had a metric ton of narcotics.

Blackwell seemed to consider that. "And what do you get out of this, Ms. Hebert? Brownie points with your superiors?"

Taylor hadn't considered that, but she could see it now. If Piggot found out that Taylor had single handedly cleaned up Winslow High, the director might become so dispassionate, she might break the world record for indifference. But no, Taylor had her sights set on something much greater.

"All I want," she said, "is a school that's safe to go to. When I got out of the hospital, you promised my dad that it would be, that you would be looking out for me. You lied. So I'm looking out for myself, and everyone else. All I need from you is someone to administer the punishments and allow me to relay the evidence I find while protecting my identity."

Blackwell clasp her hands over her desk. The clock ticked slowly on the wall. "I expect you to be on your best behavior from now on, Taylor. You will not talk back to your teachers, threaten them, or 'discipline' them. You said that heroes shouldn't get special treatment; that applies to you too. And I reserve the right to call a stop to this at any time."

"Agreed."

"In that case," she said slowly, "I look forward to working with you."

"Likewise," Taylor said. "Unless you need me to return to my art class, we can start now."

"Now? I thought you needed a week."

"For the gangs, yes. We need to hit them all at once or they'll have time to react. But there are much worse things than gangs here." The tick that had broken into Charlotte's locker sat in a room on the north side of the school. Bug senses were terrible at seeing the big picture, but Taylor only needed to focus on the right detail. The girl wore her hair in a long braid.

"I'd like to report a theft."

WWW

_And now, Danny realized that he finally had that chance._

"_Taylor," he said. "You know I love you." Dammit, you'd think he'd be better than this, after all the times he had rehearsed this in his head. _

_How many times had Taylor gone out in costume? More than once. How long before that had she gotten powers? Long enough to learn how to use them and get a costume, so at least a while. Why had it taken her so long to talk to him? _

_Because she hated him? Because he let her down when she needed him the most? After Annette died, when she was dealing with bullies at school, where was he? _

_No, that wasn't it. But Taylor had seen too much to think that Danny could handle everything that life threw at them, to think that he could handle _this_. _

WWW

Sophia Hess opened the door to the principal's office. She didn't look worried, just angry. Her eyes narrowed when she Taylor, standing in the back of the room. Taylor didn't smile or sneer. There was no point in taunting her just yet, and this was too important to risk messing up for a moment of satisfaction.

"What's the deal?" she asked

"Sophia," the principal said. "Have a seat."

She sat in the same chair that Taylor had been in a few minutes ago. With the principal in the front and Taylor in the back, Sophia couldn't look at both of them at once. That was deliberate, on Taylor's part. She _wanted_ Sophia to feel trapped, to feel surrounded. It would throw her off balance, at least in theory.

In practice, Sophia lounged in the chair, almost sideways with one arm hanging over the back.

"Do you know why you're here?" Blackwell asked.

She shrugged. "I'm guessing Hebert's been talking crap about me."

Blackwell glanced at Taylor. She had never tried to seem likable or friendly, just respectable. Taylor had spoken to her like an equal, at least in a way. That wasn't completely appropriate, but Sophia spoke to her like an annoyance.

So far, so good.

"The locker of one Charlotte Foer has been broken into today," Blackwell said. "Do you know anything about that?"

"Charlotte who?" She shrugged again. "Can't say I do."

"Oh, give it a rest already," Taylor snapped. "I already saw you do it."

Sophia turned to her, her eyes angry. "You've had your bugs on me, freak?"

Taylor had some of her flies gather in front of her in the form of a large eye. "Of course. I _know_ you. Why would I waste my time watching anyone else? And you couldn't even make it through the day."

"Uh-huh. And how well can you see with your bugs? Can you even tell one person from another?"

"I can see good enough to know that you have fourth period in room two-seventeen." Taylor had needed to check a floor map to get the number right, but that was beside the point. "I can see good enough to know that you left that room today at ten twenty-seven." She had made a note of it during Gladly's lecture. Sophia hadn't even bothered to get a hall pass. Anyone with the authority to stop her in the halls knew better than to interrupt what might be hero's business. "Then I saw you approach Charlotte's locker, phase out of reality, and open it right up."

Sophia's eyes widened at that last part. Blackwell's did too. "You used your powers to commit a crime in my school?" the principal demanded.

Sophia spun around to face her. "What? No! She's making that up!"

Taylor had read the handbook well enough to know what lines she could and could not cross. Using your powers at school was permitted as long as you were discrete or it was a justifiable emergency. Commiting a crime was frowned upon, but most petty crimes were beneath the PRT's notice. But using your powers to commit a crime? Well, that was the definition of an act of villainy.

"We could ask your teacher," Taylor suggested. "I'm sure she remembers what time you left."

Sophia made a half-turn toward Taylor, but Blackwell was the one she needed to convince. "Okay, yeah, I left class. To go to the bathroom! Is that a crime now?"

"And you did go to the bathroom," Taylor said, "carrying Charlotte's backpack, jacket, and all her books, which you dumped in the trash bin. They're still there, you know, in the bathroom between room two-seventeen and Charlotte's locker. What is it with you and lockers, anyway? There's Charlotte's locker, there's the time you filled my locker with blood and garbage to welcome me back to the new semester, and even before that there's the time you broke into my locker to steal my mother's flute! Did you use your powers then too?"

Before she had joined the Wards, Shadow Stalker had made a name for herself as a lone-wolf vigilante, but that image had been a lie. Even then, she'd had Emma by her side or in the background, helping her out, supporting her, being strong where she was weak. These cop-show interrogation tactics wouldn't have worked on Emma, but for the first time in years Sophia was alone.

Blackwell let out a breath. "I'm sorry, but I think I'm going to have to report this."

If Sophia got kicked out of the Wards, she wouldn't just lose a job, she'd lose her freedom and spend the next few years rotting in a cage with the rest of Brockton Bay's juvenile delinquents. Taylor might feel bad about that if Sophia hadn't deserved that fate several times over.

"Wait!" Sophia said. "Wait. Okay. Fine. Yeah, I broke into some nerd's locker. So what? We both know that I've done _way_ worse stuff than that. But I did _not_ use my powers, I _swear_."

Blackwell narrowed her eyes. "Your story has been rather fluid, Ms. Hess."

"No, no, she's telling the truth this time," Taylor said.

Blackwell looked up at her. "You said you saw her phase out of reality."

"I said that," she agreed. "And now you have your confession."

If Taylor had dragged this out, then the PRT would have gotten involved. Theft and vandalism wouldn't look good for Sophia, but framing her for using parahuman abilities with criminal intent wouldn't look good for Taylor either.

"So you lied to me."

Taylor held her gaze. _I accused her of a greater crime to get her to confess to a lesser one. Just like you did._ "Do you need anything else, Principal Blackwell?"

Blackwell looked from her to Sophia, who was staring daggers at Taylor and looked like she was coming up with new and exciting ways to murder her. It seemed to dawn on Blackwell that these two were supposedly heroes and were expected to work with each other.

"You may go." To herself, Blackwell muttered, "God help us all."

WWW

_But he didn't need to handle everything. He only needed to do his part, which was ..._

"_But I want you to know that I trust you, too. You were there for me when I wasn't there for you. And ... you were there for yourself when I wasn't there for you. I know things haven't been easy for you, but if you really want to be a hero, I won't hold you back. Because I know you will always do what you think is right."_

But please, _he thought, _be careful.

WWW

It would have been easy to leave the principal's office with a quip, like, "I'll see you at work, Sophia. Oh, wait." But Taylor wasn't finished yet. She was barely getting started.

Every day Sophia got detention or was suspended, she wasn't allowed to go on patrol. Breaking into Charlotte's locker and stealing her stuff had to put her down for ... a week at least, right? Well, a week for anyone else. For her maybe just a couple of days. Still, that just meant that Taylor had to catch her in the act of another crime, and then another, watching her Monday through Friday from seven to three.

In six weeks when Sophia's parole hearing came up, what would happen if Sophia told them that she couldn't be a hero because she had been too busy engaging in psychological abuse? Would they kick her off the team? And if, by some miracle of personal willpower, Sophia managed to not be a violent thug for several weeks at a time, then _mission accomplished._

At least, Sophia's part of it.

The next part of Taylor's mission was Emma Barnes.

Emma hardly ever went home right after school. Why would she? This was her seat of power. Taylor could sense her planted tick outside on the bleachers, close to Madison's tick and a few flies.

More importantly, Charlotte's ladybug was heading out the front door. Taylor hurried to catch up with her.

"Charlotte!" she called. "Going home?"

Charlotte turned and smiled a bit. "Yeah. It has been a _long_ day."

She had her backpack back. She had been called down to the principal's office during sixth period, and had kept it with her ever since. It was stained with something unidentifiable and people had held their noses as they passed in a comedically juvenile fashion, but that was only because the trio had all the imagination of a block of cheese.

"Could I ask a favor before you go? It will only take a few minutes."

"Sure. What is it?"

Taylor took a deep breath. "Well, I was thinking about what you told me during lunch, and I need you to ... not get involved, but just stay close enough to see everything, just in case I need a witness to back me up later."

Her eyes widened. "What are ... what are you going to do?" She didn't sound scared. She sounded _eager._

_Something stupid and reckless._ But she had been smart and cautious for a year and a half and it hadn't gotten her anywhere. Besides, what had Lisa told her right before she ran off to fight Bakuda?

_Don't be cautious. Be you._

"Nothing ... illegal." Probably. She was still working out how rules applied to capes. Of course, she wasn't entirely sure yet what she was going to do to Emma, either.

Part of her wanted to quit while she was ahead, but it was just like with the gangs. She had to hit them all at once or they'd have time to react.

She saw Emma and Madison exactly where she knew they would be. Sensing them with her bugs, they were just points of data in the middle of the vast array of information that was sent through her mind, but now they felt more real. Taylor expected a certain visceral reaction to seeing them, an urge to turn the other way and run, but that didn't happen this time.

It was like that T. S. Elliot quote. _We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time._ She had gone to this school and dealt with these bullies for a year and a half, but she never knew them until she left. Now, she could see them for what they truly were.

They were small.

But more than that, they were pieces of a whole. A team selected for their individual strengths and weaknesses. By analyzing the strengths of one, Taylor could recognize the weaknesses of the others. Sophia was a cape with connections she didn't know how to use, while Emma knew how to use connections she didn't have.

What about Madison? What did she bring to the team? She was cute and innocent—in appearance, not nature. She could make extended psychological abuse look like a childish game that had gotten a little out of hand, and she could kill someone in cold blood and make you want to give her a hug and tell her that everything was going to be alright, because you couldn't intimidate her without looking like a jerk.

Out of the three, Madison was the most artificial member. Taylor didn't know how Emma and Sophia got together, if Emma found out who Shadow Stalker was on her own or if Shadow Stalker unmasked to her—or if the whole thing happened on accident—but Madison was a choice. _Emma's_ choice, Taylor suspected. Out of all the rats clawing their way to the top of the pile, Emma chose Madison to be the third member of their group.

_Why?_ she thought. _Are you really that afraid, Emma, that you need her to be your shield?_ Charlotte's words echoed in her head again. It was so clear to her now, she wondered how she never saw it before.

Someone must have said something, because Emma turned and looked at her, then proceeded to ignore her until she got closer. _You're playing games still? Of course you are._

"Emma! We need to talk."

Emma made a show of just noticing her. "No we don't. _You_ need to talk, and that's more your problem than mine."

"Fine. I'll talk and you can listen. I know what you're doing, and you're going to stop it."

"Or else what? You'll go crying to the principal again?" Her voice was light and playful, full of mocking laughter. How much of that was forced?

"No."

What she _would _do, Taylor left to Emma's imagination. Meanwhile, Madison reached into her backpack and pulled out a plastic bottle. Was she going to throw it at her? Taylor thought she might try something like that. Madison was a defensive measure, and she needed Taylor to go after her directly for her to be effective. It was child's play to simply distract her.

As soon as Madison unscrewed the lid, a bee landed on her hand, making her squeal and drop it. The bottle fell through the bleachers, its contents spilling out beyond her reach. Emma turned toward Madison for just a second, a look of panic crossing her face, and Taylor stepped onto the bleachers.

"Give me a hug."

Emma's eyes widened. "Wait, what?"

She stood up to back away, but Taylor wrapped both her good arm and her stiff, unyielding cast around her. Emma trembled and smelled of mint scented shampoo and fear. "Do you know," Taylor whispered, "how many times I've dreamt of killing you? I'm done playing games, Emma. And so are you."

Emma stopped trembling. For a moment, she wasn't even breathing.

"Goodbye."


	10. Chapter 10

The Other Way

Chapter Ten

Taylor stood on holy ground, filling out the paperwork.

She was sure that Panacea didn't need to know her list of allergies in order to heal her, but she wasn't in a position to argue. She was getting healed for free, so if Panacea wanted to keep out the riff raff with a blockade of medical forms, that was her call.

Describe in detail the extent of your injuries and/or illnesses.

For a moment, Taylor considered being honest. Arm used as chew toy by parahuman, is currently pudding. She had started to regret throwing away the pain killers. It wasn't a big deal when she had something to do to distract herself, but trying to fall asleep knowing that rolling over would send a jolt of agony through her had resulted in a miserable night.

Instead she wrote, "Arm crushed in car accident. Complete deafness in one ear." How much detail did they want? The form had half a page of blank lines, but Taylor wasn't going to fluff up an insubstantial statement to make it look more impressive. This was a hospital, not an English class.

She glanced around at the other people in the room. Taylor wasn't the only one who didn't need a wheelchair to get in, but she was in the minority. A man sitting next to her with grey hair and leathery skin was missing both legs below the knees, and more than a few of the patients had tubes sticking out of them attached to IV poles.

"So," the amputee said. "What brings you here?" His voice was raspy, like he had smoked a pack of cigarettes every day since he turned seven.

"Broken arm," she muttered, looking away.

"Broken arm?" He gripped the armrests of his wheelchair. His arms looked strong, not thick like a bodybuilder, but wiry and taut, despite the way his skin hung loose around them. "You came here to see Panacea for a broken arm?"

It was four o'clock. Panacea was expected to arrive at four exactly, but it wasn't like anyone was going to complain if their free, miraculous healing happened a few minutes behind schedule.

"It was a pretty bad break," Taylor said. She wished the man would bother someone else and leave her alone. If he knew I broke my arm fighting Hookwolf as a superhero he'd ... he'd ... But that didn't matter because he didn't know and Taylor wasn't going to tell him.

"Oh, leave the poor girl alone," a woman on the other side of the circle said. "You're getting healed for free just like everyone else. No one earns Panacea's healing, no one deserves this, but we're still here." She was a dark skinned heavyset woman who had recently said goodbye to being middle aged. Taylor wasn't sure what her ailment was, but there were purplish swellings across her neck and fingers. "When Christ the Lord healed the invalid at the waters of Bethesda, He did not ask for worth, only need, and all we here are in need of healing."

Taylor looked down and busied herself with her paperwork, going over the list of things she wasn't allergic to. She hadn't been a hero for very long, but if she had a choice between people taking her for granted and comparing her to Jesus, she'd pick the former. Heck, if everyone could just ignore her entirely whenever she put on her costume, she'd be okay with that.

"She's a parahuman, not a messiah," the amputee spat. "She has a limited amount of time to heal people each day, and she spends most of it on the ones who are actively dying. All I'm saying is that her time would be better spent if Panacea didn't waste her healing on people who didn't need it."

Before the argument could escalate further, the door opened and Panacea stepped into the room. Taylor recognized her from her pictures, all red and white robes, though Panacea tended to smile more during photo ops.

"Sorry I'm late," Panacea mumbled. "There was a school thing, and then traffic ..."

There was no resentment in response to her excuse, nor reassurances that everything was alright. Just reverent, raptured silence.

Panacea let out a tired sigh and began her work. She began at one end of the circle and took the hand of an old, bald man. Taylor watched as years seemed to fall away from the man over the course of a few minutes, and Panacea moved on to the next patient.

I met your sister, Taylor wanted to say. I saved someone that night, and the paramedics said that you were going to heal her. Did you?

But she couldn't, not out of costume in a crowd of people. Panacea made her way through the circle, healing people one by one. Some thanked her and others burst into tears, but Panacea made no reply.

When she reached Taylor, she touched her hand Taylor could feel her insides ... shift. Her ear popped and suddenly she could hear the world around her in sharp focus. The shards of bone inside her arm dissolved and reformed into their ideal shape. Beyond that, her whole body smoothed out, relaxing and strengthening herself under Panacea's command.

Throughout the whole affair, Panacea never made eye contact. She stared into the distance as she healed every physical flaw Taylor suffered from, and never looked her in the eye.

WWW

Taylor still didn't feel like she belonged in the Wards HQ. It was like she had wandered in and they hadn't thrown her out yet. But Sophia hadn't shown up, courtesy of Blackwell coming through for once, and that was definitely a step in the right direction.

As she put on her costume, she realized something. She had two working arms for the first time since her fight with Hookwolf, and had two working ears for the first time since her fight with Bakuda. Even Sophia was gone, if only for the day.

Ffor the first time in years, things were looking up.

That worried her. When everything was going wrong she could slog through, but at times like these she felt like life was trying to sneak up behind her.

Well, she had a thousand unblinking compound eyes on the back of her head. Whatever happened, she'd deal with it.

Keep telling yourself that.

Work shifts lasted four hours on weekdays, with one from one to five and another from five to nine with a team meeting right when the two shifts met, except during emergencies. Apparently the ones who went to Arcadia could leave school right after lunch time without arousing suspicion, but Taylor expected to work evenings until summer vacation.

She found Clockblocker in the lounge room in his white, clock themed costume with his mask off, sitting on the couch. He gave her a lazy wave when she entered. "Hey, Taylor. What's up?"

"Hello, Dennis." She hesitated, looking around the room. Besides the couch there were bean bags, but it was physically impossible to look dignified sitting on one. She decided to stand instead.

He glanced up from his phone after a moment. "You can sit down if you want to. Or have you been spending too much time with Miss Militia? At ease, soldier!"

Taylor smiled awkwardly behind her mask and sat down next to him.

"You know that's a Tinkertech couch, right?"

She looked down at it. It didn't feel any different than a normal one, but she didn't have much experience with advanced technology. "It is?"

"What, Kid didn't tell you about it? That's weird. Usually he's happy to talk your ear off about that sort of thing. I guess he's just trying not to scare you off."

Taylor wasn't sure what Clockblocker meant by that, but they didn't know each other very well. Ever since she joined the team, they hadn't seen each other much besides that first day when she had attacked Shadow Stalker on sight. She regretted nothing, but that still probably wasn't a very good first impression.

"Did he make it?"

"No, Kid Win specializes in guns. You can have a lot of fun on this couch, but I've yet to make it shoot anything. This is Armsmaster's work. He whipped it up when he had gotten drunk in his workshop, realized that he couldn't use it to fight crime, and sent it over here. True story."

She frowned skeptically. "Okay. So what does this Tinkertech couch do?"

"Like I said, Armsmaster made it, and whenever he makes something it does, like, twelve different things at once. Honestly, I'm still trying to figure it out, though I found out about the built in mini-fridge on the first day." He reached down under the armrest and opened up a side compartment. "Pepsi or Coke?"

"Um, either?"

"Well, we're sponsored by Pepsi, so we get these for free," he said, tossing her a can.

Taylor hesitated. She felt more confident with her mask on, more like Myriad than boring, wimpy Taylor, but she took it off anyway and put her glasses on. "That ... doesn't seem like Tinkertech, honestly."

"Yeah, but that's just part of it," he went on. "It also has an advanced kind of memory foam in the cushions." He bounced on it while sitting to demonstrate, and she found herself following suit. "Feel that? That perfect balance of softness and firmness? That is low-resilience viscoelastic polyurethane foam right there. Tinkertech super science caressing your butt to give it the care and love it deserves."

Taylor stopped bouncing immediately. "Um, okay."

"Yeah, I think Armsmaster was experimenting with Dragon's containment foam and made this by accident. The third thing is that this couch has its own built-in security system."

"Really?"

He nodded. "Uh-huh. It sets off a siren, notifies the Protectorate, and puts the entire PRTHQ on lockdown ... whenever it catching someone making out on it."

She blinked. "What?"

He held up his hands defensively. "I know, right? They're fine sending us at serial killers, mass murderers, and goddamn Endbringers, but unregulated teen hormones? That's where they draw the line."

She looked at him skeptically. "That doesn't make any sense at all."

"I know! And we all got beds just down the hall which, I don't know if you've checked yet, do not have built-in PDA alarms." He studied her reaction, and she couldn't keep the skepticism from her face. "I'm getting the impression you don't believe me."

How to phrase this. "I guess I'm not used to Tinkertech being so commonplace. The elevator still makes me nervous."

He nodded. "Got it. No, totally. I found out about the couch the hard way. And if you don't believe me, I can prove it to you real fast."

Before he could map out what he had in mind, the door opened and Gallant and Kid Win came in. "Hello, hello," Gallant said cheerfully.

"Hey Dean," Clockblocker said. "How'd patrol go?"

"Great. Nearly everyone we met wanted to borrow Chris's hoverboard."

"And every time I had to tell them no," Kid Win said, "because I don't want Miss Piggy to carve out my spleen."

"Why would she care?" Taylor asked.

"Liabilities," Gallant said. "She doesn't want anyone falling off and suing us." He put a hand on Kid Win's shoulder. "Don't worry. She'll have the waiver forms finalized in no time." He turned to Taylor. "And Taylor, why am I not surprised to see you back already?"

She hesitated. "I, uh, I figured that I haven't been working here long enough to start milking sick days just yet."

He laughed. Taylor didn't know how to laugh right; whenever she tried, it always sounded forced or bitter or, or just wrong. Gallant's laugh sounded easy and confident without being at anyone's expense, the sort of laugh that people imitated when they were learning how to do it. "After catching four major Empire villains two days ago, you could take the whole month off and no one would challenge you on it." He glanced at the clock on the wall. "Though ... if you'd like to test out your new arm, could you help me with something?"

"Sure." She set her unopened Pepsi can on the armrest and got up. Wait, she thought. What did Clockblocker mean about proving it? She pushed that thought away. He was probably just teasing her anyway. "What do you need?"

Kid Win glanced at her as she passed by, but he didn't say anything. "You know," Gallant said, leading her down the hall, "Chris made my power armor for me. Just after he joined he had gotten access to all the PRT Tinker designs and wanted to figure out what his specialty was. He never even made a suit for himself, but he made this for me."

"That seems ... nice," Taylor said. And odd. Maybe she was just selfish, but she wanted to make sure that she was as well protected as possible before getting into a fight. And if she could only protect one of her teammates, she'd focus on someone who had to get close to use their powers, like Clockblocker or Aegis instead of a Blaster like Gallant.

But ... but Gallant had a way about him. He was patient and encouraging in a way that made people grow confident while he was around. Taylor could imagine Chris, maybe twelve or thirteen at the time, not sure what he could do but eager to try, and Gallant offering him a thumbs up and willing to be his guinea pig.

"Absolutely," Gallant agreed. "This suit saved my life more times that I can count, and he never even wanted to take credit for it." They reached his room. "But I will say this about power armor: it is a hassle to take off. Could you give me a hand?"

Taylor froze, not sure if she had heard him right. "Um, what?"

"It enhances my strength, so it doesn't matter how heavy it is when I'm wearing it, but as soon as I disconnect the pieces I can barely lift it." He paused as though noticing her discomfort. "You can leave the door open if you feel uncomfortable, but it's good for everyone to become familiar with the more technical equipment, just in case it gets damaged in the field."

Focus. He's probably wearing something underneath. Between Clockblocker's teasing and Gallant's innocent requests, her face was going to melt. "Sure. That makes sense. What do you want me to do?"

He ran her through the basics of what to push and twist to take the pieces of his armor off and where to place them on the charging stand so they'd be ready when he needed them next. "So," he said after they started on his left arm, "you got healed today. What did you think of Panacea?"

"I'm not sure," she said, detaching his forearm piece. "You probably know her better than I do. I only met her this once, and I didn't talk to her."

"I know. But when you hear the same sound for too long, you start to tune it out. That helps when you're trying to focus on more important things, but people don't become less important just because they've been there for a while. And I value your opinion."

Taylor blushed, and she knew that Gallant could see her emotions as easily as he could see her face. "When I first decided to be a hero, I didn't want to be the kind of cape you read about or see on the news. I just wanted to go out, do some hero stuff, then get out before people started asking questions. But Panacea ... Panacea can't do that. I mean, short of sneaking into a hospital and ninjaing someone's cancer when they're unconscious, but that's not practical. Then there are the people she heals, and some of them take her for granted while others treat her like she's the Second Coming, and I don't know which is worse."

He raised his eyebrows at that. "That's incredible."

"What is?" Taylor said, setting down the latest piece of armor. It didn't need to plug into anything, she just needed to stick it on a magnet. "Do you think I'm wrong?"

"No, just the opposite. I've known her since before she triggered, and honestly you have a better grasp of her situation than I do. I've been trying to get her to take a break for a while, but, well, it's the classic hero trap. You start out patting yourself on the back for all the people you save, but before you know it you're beating yourself up for all the people you failed, and then you're convinced that taking the day off means killing half a dozen people." He gave her a sidelong look. "Fortunately, no one here struggles with that sort of thing."

"Hey! I'm fine. I've never felt better in my life. I have no reason to take the day off."

That was true. Panacea didn't just heal her injuries; she rejuvenated her. Everything from the soreness she had from not sleeping well, a blister on her toe from running, and the acne on her chin was gone without a trace. Besides, what was she going to do with a day off? Wait for another day at school? No thank you.

"Hey Dean?" she said, only partially to change the subject. "People can't lie to you, right?" Lisa had told her as much, and Kid Win had verified it so Taylor wouldn't arouse suspicion by knowing too much.

"Not to my face, unless they have an ability that counters mine."

Taylor nodded. "Good. I want to talk to the doctor that did the MRI for the Alcott girl. I want you to come with me."

He gave her a flat look. "You think the doctor might be lying."

She shrugged. "Maybe."

He didn't point out the obvious, that a PRT doctor conspiring to botch MRI tests to aid criminal syndicates working to kidnap parahuman children was not the most likely of theories. Taylor appreciated that.

"Sure," Gallant said instead as he stepped out of the last piece of his power armor and put it on the stand. "Say, tomorrow at four?"

She nodded. That would give them an hour before she needed to go on patrol. A better hero would be doing this for the missing girl, but the larger reason was because the conspiracy theory about the fake MRI results had been Lisa's idea, and Taylor wanted to know how much she could trust her.

As soon as she left Gallant's room, she nearly bumped into Kid Win.

"Hey Taylor," he said, sounding nervous about something. "Uh, got a moment? I want to give you something."

"Okay, sure," she said. Despite herself, she felt nervous as she followed him. At school, the only times someone focused on her was when they had some cruel prank in mind. Having people go out of their way to be nice to her was going to take some time getting used to.

"So, what did Dean want?"

"Oh, just some help taking off his armor." That still sounded wrong in her head, but maybe she just had a dirty mind. "He said you made it for him."

"Oh yeah. Ages ago. Um, you know he's dating someone, right?"

Taylor blinked. "Yes, I know. I met Glory Girl before I met him."

"Oh. Well, as long as you know." He cleared his throat as they entered what Taylor assumed to be Kid Win's room. "Anyway, I heard about your fight yesterday."

"Yeah." Taylor looked away. She had nearly gotten Miss Militia killed. Would have, if Armsmaster hadn't shown up when he did. "We were supposed to catch them by surprise, and instead they caught us by surprise."

"So I was thinking about that—can I see your phone? Thanks. So I was thinking about that and starting Tinkering. It's not really polished so there might be some bugs to work out—get it? Because ... anyway, I want you to have this."

He gave her back her phone and a small, black cube about a centimeter wide. "What is it?"

"It's an antigravity camera. It has mass, but no weight. I wanted to make it small and light enough for your bugs to carry, so ... Armsmaster's the one you want when your making really small tech, but I hit a block the other day when I was in my workshop, so ... yeah."

After linking it to her phone, the screen had a view from the camera's perspective. Taylor had a dragonfly pick up the device, and it seemed so light that a housefly could do the same if it had a way to grip it. Her mind raced with the possibilities. She could use her swarm as periphery vision, and if she noticed anything suspicious, she could fly in Kid Win's camera for all the details.

"Oh Chris, it's perfect!"

He grinned awkwardly. "The audio is crap, just so you know. And the battery life needs work. And it's really fragile, so I don't know how long it will last before it breaks. Anyway, let me know how it works out for you."

With that, the two of them headed over to the meeting room.

"Hey Chris?" Taylor asked as they walked. "Can I ask you something? Why did you make a suit of power armor for Gallant, but not for yourself?"

He shrugged. "What would I need power armor for? I play with guns. You don't need super strength to shoot guns."

"You don't need super strength to shoot empathic energy blasts, either."

"Meh. He had been masquerading as a Tinker for a while by the time I joined, going around wearing what were practically tin foil mittens because no one could tell the difference. Seriously, it was embarrassing and I had to do something."

"Ah."

They walked in silence a moment longer before he stopped. "So it's like this. Technically I could make cheap knock-offs of Armsmaster's power armor for the whole team. Hell, if I wanted I could download some of Dragon's designs and have everyone run around in giant mechs. It would take me forever and a half, but I could do it.

"But, see, I don't want to. Every Tinker has a specialty, and I figured out after making Gallant's suit that power armor isn't mine. Can I make it anyway? Sure. You can't mass produce Tinkertech, and you need at least a basically competent Tinker to recreate it, so I could spend all my time in my workshop regurgitating the inventions of greater minds, and it might be better for the team if I did. But ... but call it narcissism or vanity or whatever, but I don't want to work all day doing what any Tinker can do when I still don't know what I can do." He stopped and looked at her. "Does that make sense?"

"Yeah," she said. "Yeah, I get it." For the team, it might be best for Kid Win to take the best tech he had access to and manufacture that, but for the world it was better for him to add something new to the archives. "And you specialize in guns?"

He nodded. "And let me tell you, it's frustrating. It's not that hard to make a nonlethal gun, but after I'm done with that, you know, what else is there to do? Redesign it to not kill people harder? So I started working on something big, something for emergencies instead of the day to day routine. I spent, like, two weeks sick as a dog from all the ADD meds I was on, finally managed to finish my Alternator Canon, and then ..." His voice trailed off as they entered the meeting room. "I'll tell you later."

"Alright!" Aegis said. He stood up from the couch where he had been sitting and took position in the middle of the room. He, Vista, and Browbeat seemed to have arrived in the past few minutes. "It looks like everyone's here, so let's get started."

Clockblocker glanced around. "Sophia's not coming today?"

"No, she had a school thing."

Taylor smiled as she put her mask back on. Sophia's "school thing" was after-school detention, and as long as Taylor stayed on Blackwell's good side, Sophia stayed on the south side of sanity, and Taylor kept a few thousand compound eyes on her for every hour of the day, then Sophia might keep on having "school things" for weeks to come. Followed by her parole hearing.

Vista's response was less muted. "Yes, yes, no Hess!" she shouted, pumping her fists in the air like a cheerleader.

Dean, the one person in the room in plain clothes, gave her a half-hearted scolding look. "You don't need to say that every time she doesn't show up."

Vista grinned, a little pink in the face, and looked down.

"Big things first," Aegis said, ignoring both of them. "People are starting to calm down, but they're still scared. People in ABB territory are worried that what's left of the gang is going to implode with them in it, and they're worried that the Empire is going to just take the ABB's place in the docks. The gang's down to Oni Lee, but they still have a lot of unpowered members."

"Are we going to try to finish them off?" Taylor asked. Everyone looked at her, and she instantly regretted making herself the center of attention. She thought she heard Clockblocker snigger.

"Uh, no," Aegis said. "There's already a power vacuum in the city, and we don't want to make it worse. Armsmaster and the rest of the Protectorate are on top of things, but ideally the ABB restablizes as a much smaller gang like what Skidmark's group has right now. The biggest concern is the Empire becoming the dominant power in the underground, but Armsmaster is dealing with that too. Our concern is making our presence known and reminding the public that they have people on top looking out for them."

Taylor frowned. That seemed ... vague, as far as team objectives went, and pretty wishy-washy. Taking out the rest of the ABB before they had a chance to recover made sense, and taking the fight to the Empire as the new number one enemy made sense too, but patting people on the head and telling them that the heroes were doing everything in their power to keep them safe—when they clearly weren't ...

"So Dennis? Robert? Keep that in mind when you're patrolling downtown today. Vista? You're taking Myriad down boardwalk. Smile, talk to people, and let them know that the city is not on the brink of bursting into flames, because even with Bakuda in custody, that rumor has been spreading around. And I'll be manning the consoles for the next shift."

"You're taking porn duty again?" Clockblocker said. He winced theatrically and shook his head. "I get it, man. Breakups are rough."

"First of all, there's no breakup. We went on two dates, didn't click, and so we're not going out for a third one. Secondly, the computers are for coordinating our team with the PRT and the Protectorate as well as looking up the database for relevant intel. If Director Piggot catches you using said computers for viewing pornography, she will—"

"Watch it with you?"

Aegis stood in silence for a moment, then let out a long breath. "Ugh. Moving on." He checked a list on his phone. "Robert? A reminder about tomorrow. So ... you're reminded."

Browbeats massive shoulders sagged. "Got it. Is it too late for me to call in sick?"

Aegis shook his head. "It's community outreach. You don't have to like it, you just have to pretend to like it." He shrugged. "It's a bunch of second graders. Talk to them about the importance of education, not doing drugs, and throw in an amusing anecdote or two, and you get second and third period off free."

"So, I'm not planning on getting shot today," Browbeat said, "but if I did ..."

Dean reached over and patted him on the back. "Don't worry about it, Rob. Kids that age love you no matter what you do, they'll forget everything you tell them no matter what you say, and it's good practice for all the other PR events."

Browbeat seemed to relax a little, but he didn't say anything.

"Next on the list," Aegis continued, "the beach barbecue Saturday night. Check the sign up list if you want to bring anything, and if you need a ride there ..." His voice trailed off as he squeezed his eyes shut. "Dammit, Dennis, that's going to be in my brain all day."

Clockblocker shrugged. "What can I say? I'm the best at what I do."

"Yeah, you need to die."

"That's fair."

He checked his phone again. "Last thing, Taylor, you got a letter." He took out an envelope and offered it to her.

Taylor blinked. "What?"

Clockblocker sighed dramatically. "I remember when I still got fan mail. It's like after you've been around here for a few weeks, they forget all about you."

Taylor took the envelope and stared at it. "But ... what for?"

"Oh, gee, I don't know," Visa said, rolling her eyes. "Maybe it's because you're responsible for five of the six villians locked up upstairs or something."

"Can't be," Clockblocker said. "It has to be because she's new."

Technically she had been involved with all six, but Armsmaster had left her name out of Lung's report. Even then, she had merely been around while the Undersiders dealt with him. Against Bakuda, that had been dumb luck with an extra portion of dumb. If it weren't for both the Undersiders and the Wards helping her out, she'd have ended up either dead or mutilated. As for the four Empire villains, she hadn't done much more than tag along while Miss Militia and Armsmaster saved the day.

Still, she thought, nice reminder that we got a bunch of super powered mass murderers hanging over our heads like the Sword of Damocles. Seriously, who designed this building?

"But that is about it," Aegis said. "Unless someone has anything else to bring up, that's a wrap."

One by one, the heroes went their separate ways, leaving Taylor with Vista. She glanced down at the letter in your hand. Fanmail? Weird. "I'm just going to drop this off in my room, then I'll meet up with you at the elevator."

"See you there," Vista said.

In her room, Taylor was about to leave it with the rest of her stuff, but she hesitated. Fanmail, she thought again. She knew that heroes got letters like these, but she had always assumed that would happen to other heroes. Of course, she had never imagined joining the Wards either, or using her position to strong arm her principal into giving a crap about bullies.

Shaking her head, she tore open the envelope. If she didn't at least look at it, her mind would be back here wondering what it said throughout her entire patrol.

A quick scan of the letter told her that it wasn't fanmail. It was full of legal terms and formal language.

A court order.

"What?" she said aloud. "I'm being sued?"

WWW

Aegis told her that he'd handle it. Not how, not by when, just that he'd handle it. Apparently, working for the government meant that people saw you as a bottomless money well and the world was full of bloodsucking lawyers looking to drain you dry. Even more apparently, Bakuda was a sore loser and after killing several people and planting bombs in the heads of over a hundred more, she took issue with Myriad biting her with a black widow. In self defense.

She wondered how that argument would hold up in court.

But Aegis was going to take care of it. The PRT had expert lawyers on retainer and a fund set aside for dealing with liabilities such as these, so Taylor didn't need to worry about her dad losing their home because she wanted to play hero.

She worried anyway.

She tried to focus on the here and now, where she patrolled the Boardwalk with Vista. She brought her swarm with her, never again wanting to be caught without it and surrounded herself with anything that could fly while a carpet of spiders, roaches, and everything else followed at her feet.

She wasn't sure why she bothered, though. The Boardwalk was the safest part of town, kept clean by the city to look good for tourists. Tourism was a major part of Brockton Bay's economy in the summertime, but even in April the streets were full of visitors pointing cameras at anything that looked interesting.

More often than not, Myriad found the cameras pointed at the two of them.

"Is it always this bad?" she asked.

"What, the flash photography?" Vista replied. "It's usually a lot worse. Normally everyone's all up in your face wanting you to sign something and take a picture with you. Compared to that, this is pretty nice. I think it's because of you."

"Me?"

Vista nodded and gestured toward the swarm. "There's nothing like a cloud of mosquitoes to keep people at a polite distance. I know how well you can control your bugs, and I'm still screaming on the inside being this close to them. Paparazzi Pete over there couldn't be paid to come close enough to bother us."

"Oh. Should I ... get rid of them?" Even as she said it, Myriad wasn't sure she could follow through. After what happened with the Empire, she wouldn't travel without a healthy supply of bugs on hand any more than she'd walk around naked.

"No! Of course not, unless you want people shoving pieces of paper in your face for you to sign. I get it worse than anyone because I'm, like, 'cute and approachable' or something. When Shadow Stalker runs into that kind of nonsense, she just, you know, uses her way with people. When try I do that, Miss Piggy chews me out for projecting a 'negative public image,' but Stalker can get away with it because it's 'an integral part to her public persona,' or something."

Sophia getting away with everything short of murder? What a surprise. "That does sound like her," she said.

"So what's the deal with you two, anyway?"

Myriad shrugged, not wanting to get into it. No now, not on a busy street. "You don't like her either."

"Yeah, I dislike her. You loathe her. Big difference."

"Maybe I'll tell you sometime."

"Sure, sure, keep your secrets. Meanwhile, I have to share all my secrets about going on patrol."

"Like what?"

"Like ... street contacts. They're essential if you ever want to find out what's going on in the city. Come on, I'll introduce you to one." Vista led her to a round-faced Hispanic man running a churro stand. "Hey, Ramirez. What's up?"

"Vista!" the man said. "It's good to see you." He picked up a churro with a napkin, injected some caramel filling into it, and handed it to her. "Who's your friend? I haven't seen you before, are you new?"

"Uh ..."

"Yeah," Vista said. "She just started, what, last week was it? Give or take. Myriad, this is Ramirez, Ramirez, this is Myriad."

Myriad kept her swarm away from the man's churro stand and made sure that her bugs didn't do anything that would bother a health inspector. "Hello."

"Hello yourself." He eyed her swarm, but he kept his tone cheerful. "Churro?"

Myriad took it. She couldn't eat it with her mask on, but taking it was less trouble than explaining that. She felt like she ought to pay the man, but she hadn't thought to bring any money with her. This same thing had happened when she had gotten coffee with Glory Girl, so maybe this sort of thing was common, vendors giving free stuff to heroes for cheap advertising.

No one ever tells you that when you become a hero, you get a free churro.

Vista wore a visor that covered only the upper half of her face and had already started munching on hers. She had used her power to make it several times its normal size. Could she eat the whole thing like that? Maybe her power would wear off after it reached her stomach because of ... the Manton Effect or something.

"So, anything new going on?" Vista asked.

"Well, let me see. I think I may have seen someone selling drugs this morning, but he scampered off before security arrived. There was, uh, a bit of commotion an hour ago, but that could have just been someone in a hurry. Other than that, it's been quiet."

Of course it had been quiet. This was the Boardwalk, the one nice place in the city. Only ... it wasn't nice. It just looked nice. One of the worst things about her powers was that there some things that she didn't want to know about bugs, like how many of them were in the kitchen of whatever restaurant she was eating at. She learned early on that nothing was clean; the nicer places just did a better job of faking it.

If I were criminal scum working on Boardwalk, where would I be? The main streets, where she and Vista were, definitely wouldn't cut it. Even when a couple of heroes were posing for tourists, the enforcers were notoriously brutal when dealing with shoplifters, panhandlers, and everyone in between.

What kind of crime even took place in this part of town? White collar? No, that was more of a downtown thing. And Myriad didn't know how to recognize tax evasion or money laundering on sight. A scam? Conartists? Well, they had just passed a coffee shop that charged eighteen dollars for a single cup, and if that wasn't a scam she didn't know what was.

No, if there was anything happening on the Boardwalk, it would be under the rug and in the holes in the wall, so that's where she sent her bugs, searching for trouble. The back alleys and side streets, away from the main foot traffic. Between her swarm and Kid Win's camera a dragonfly was carrying, she'd know about anything going on within a few blocks.

"So I gotta ask," Vista said after she finished talking with her street contact. "Where'd you get your costume?"

"What?" Myriad asked, focusing on her swarm.

"Your costume. You didn't get it from us, and the doctors couldn't cut through it when they tried to look at your arm. Heck, Hookwolf couldn't cut through it, and the first time I ran into that guy, he tore through my costume like it was tissue paper."

"Oh." She didn't like to think about Hookwolf swinging her back and forth like a chew toy. "Uh, I made it."

"Really?"

She nodded. "Wove it from spider silk."

"You're kidding."

"Black widow dragline silk is pretty strong for its weight. It's not as good as the Darwin bark spider, but ..."

Her swarm picked up something, three figures in a back ally with the sudden, thrashing movements that she had come to associate with violence. After she knew where to look, or even thought to look at all, it had taken a depressingly small amount of time. But no matter what part of the city she was in, this was still Brockton Bay.

She took off at a run, and Vista followed close behind.

"What's going on?" Vista yelled.

"A fight!" Myriad called back. "A mugging or something. This way!"

Right when she began to wonder if the shorter girl could keep up with her, the ground shrank in front of her like a compressed accordion. She stumbled and nearly fell as Vista caught up.

"This way?"

"Y-yeah." Holy crap this was disorientating. Vista's space warping was pretty much how Myriad had always imagined drugs would be like, only without the water colors. And she had never been interested in drugs.

Her swarm gave her a decent image of the landscape, and a few nauseating turns later (which she let Vista take the lead on), they found the fight.

Only it wasn't a fight. It was a beating. There were two grown men against one girl. She was a little older than Vista and had blood dripping out of her nose and down her chin.

The two men were wearing enforcers uniforms.

The pieces fell together in her mind. This wasn't a crime. This was just the opposite. There was never any crime on the Boardwalk, not with the enforcers around. There was nothing to do here except to leave and get back to real cape work: looking good for tourists.

"Let go of her," she said instead.

The two enforcers looked her up and down. Armsmaster had told her that her costume made her look like a villain. That hadn't been intentional, but she'd never had time to design a new one and she wasn't famous enough for people to recognize her as a hero. But Vista was with her, and she was one of the more iconic heroes in the city.

"That's okay," the taller of the two enforcers said. "We can handle this, thanks."

Myriad had left most of her swarm behind when she had started running, but there were always more bugs nearby. Ants, beetles, roaches, and flies congregated around them, surrounding the two men. "That wasn't a request."

The taller enforcer let go of the girl, but he didn't look happy about it. "Look, I don't know who you are, so I'm gonna say you're new. Let me guess, you just joined the team? First time in costume? It's a rookie mistake, really, to rush in without knowing all the facts, so let me fill you in. This little bitch? She's a thief. We caught her shoplifting and we brought her back here to show her how things work. We're just doing our jobs here, so I strongly suggest that you get back to doing yours."

"You're job," she said softly. The girl was black and the two enforcers were white. "If you want to beat up black people for a living, the Empire Eighty-Eight is always hiring." Her swarm came closer and closer with every word. "But if you joined them, you'd have to face consequences, wouldn't you?"

"Hey! This isn't a racial thing."

"No," Myriad agreed. "It isn't. How long did you have to look for a job that gave you an excuse to hurt people for a living?" Taylor knew people like that. It wasn't about justice, the common good, or keeping order. It was about violence, about making yourself feel strong. And attached to that—attached to it like a leech—it was about making other people feel weak.

Why had she been so surprised to find Sophia Hess behind that mask? Where else would she have gone to hurt people without question besides the one group in the city that was beyond question?

"Woah, it's not like that, Miss," the shorter of the two enforcers said. He was a red-haired man with sideburns. "We keep things clean here. What we do might not be pretty, but this is the only part of the city where people can feel safe."

"Yeah!" the taller man said. "And if you don't like it, you can take it up with our manager."

Myriad ignored them and turned to the girl they had been hurting. She was pretty for her age, an early bloomer who had, for some reason, gone out of her way to dress as trashy as possible with cutoff shorts, fishnet stockings, and not a whole lot above the waist either. "What's your name?"

The girl hesitated. "Ai-Ashley."

"Tell me, Ashley. Do these men make you feel safe?"

"Hell no."

"That doesn't count!" the taller enforcer said. "She's a worthless—" He broke off in a coughing fit when a fly flew down his throat.

"Could you tell me in your own words what happened?" Myriad asked.

"Well, I was minding my own business, doing some window shopping, you know, when ... when these two creeps came up and started hitting on me. And I, well, I kind of told them that they looked like pigs and smelled like dogs, and they ought to just pick one motif and stick with it. That's ... that's when they grabbed a pair of sunglasses off the rack, held them up in the air, said real loud that I had stolen them, then dragged me back here."

"That's not what—"

Myriad raised her hand to silence him. "Do you have any proof to support your story?" she asked the enforcers. "Security camera footage, other witnesses, anything?" They hesitated and glanced at each other. "No? Well then, you said you brought her back here to show her how things are done. Let me show you how things are done. You're both under arrest."

"What? You can't arrest us just for doing our job!"

"If your job involves you commiting a crime, then yes I can. Even if this girl is guilty of shoplifting, she'd be charged with a slight misdemeanor and have to pay a fine. Assaulting a minor, however, is a serious offense."

"A fine?" the tall one spat. "A fine's not going to do a goddamn thing! You know what makes the Boardwalk different from the rest of this hellhole of a city? Us. Not you super freaks in spandex, but people like us willing to make the hard choices and get our hands dirty!"

Myriad stepped closer to him and her swarm, which had finally arrived and had pooled around her feet. "Is that what you recommend? Throw out due process and human rights, and just hurt people until they finally get the point?" A spider crawled across his face, and he swatted it away. "Because I can do that better than you could possibly imagine."

He stumbled backward, his bravado and self-righteous indignation crumbling beneath his feet. Then he ran. He didn't get far, though. The ground in front of him swelled up, sloping upward into an impassable wall, and he fell backward as Myriad's bugs swarmed him. She was glad Vista stepped in when she did. Myriad could handle two ordinary men by herself, but knowing that Vista was supporting her on this meant a lot.

Especially because she had no idea how to do the next part.

"Hey, Vista?" she said softly to her teammate. "Would you mind calling this in please?"

"Sure," she said, and she began dialling the police. Myriad knew that they needed to pass this on to the police, but she wasn't sure about the exact procedure.

She moved closer to the fallen enforcer who was writhing on the ground. "If you stop to focus," she said softly, "you'll notice that none of the thousand creatures under your shirt and up your pant legs are biting you. None at all. All of them can. Do not run."

The man's breathing slowed and he gingerly rose to his feet with an expression on his face that suggested that he had just lost several years of his life. The other enforcer, which Myriad began mentally referring to as the smart one, remained stock still the entire time.

"Thanks for backing me up," she said after moving back to Vista.

"No problem," she replied. "I just hope you know what you're doing."

Uh ... "Honestly, I'm just doing what feels right. I don't like bullies, not even ones wearing uniforms."

Vista nodded. "I get that. Piggot might not, but we'll deal with her later."

Right. Piggot. Her last—and only—conversation with the woman hadn't gone well. But like Vista said, later.

Ashley approached the two of them. She had wiped most of the blood off her face, but she still looked nervous. "Is something wrong?" Myriad asked.

"Uh, no, nothing's wrong. Hey, thanks for, you know, stepping in like that. I mean it. But, um, is it okay if I ... go now?"

Myriad cocked her head. "Now? It would mean a lot if you were here to give a statement to the police when they arrive."

"Yeah. I'd love to, I mean it, but my folks get really upset if I'm not home on time."

"On time," Myriad repeated. "It's not even seven yet."

"... They're paranoid. Also, I live in Empire territory, so, you know, maybe they're not that paranoid."

Myriad considered offering to walk the girl home, but she suspected that Ashley was more worried about talking to the police than racist gangsters. Maybe she wasn't very confident in the worth of her word against the word of two enforcers. Maybe she wasn't used to the law being on her side and she wasn't willing to take a leap of faith now. Or maybe the enforcers had been telling the truth and Ashley really had been shoplifting. Maybe Myriad had jumped into the situation and had sided with whoever she could identify with more easily instead of who was right. Maybe this whole thing had been a huge mistake.

"Well, travel safely." She had picked up enough evidence of Ashley's abuse from her fly cam, so the girl's actual presence here wasn't essential. Myriad looked down at the churro in her hand that she hadn't been able to use or get rid of, and realized that she had been holding on to it the entire time. Not exactly the image she had wanted to present. It was crushed slightly where she had been holding it, but other than that it was still good. She offered it to the girl. "Before you leave, would you like a churro?"

WWW

Director Piggot had been waiting to see them by the time their patrol was over, and she was not happy. She demanded to know what in God's name they had been thinking while refusing to accept any answer other than that they had not been thinking at all. She went on to suggest in a tone of irony that they might as well go after the police for kidnapping everyone they put in jail.

Myriad tried to explain that the enforcers had been acting in clear violation of their authority, which was not difficult because as a private security force instead of licensed law enforcement, they didn't have any authority to violate.

Vista, meanwhile, stepped on her foot and broke into a fit of coughing that sounded like, "shut-up."

Ultimately, they were punished with a modified patrol schedule. Neither of them would be allowed to patrol the Boardwalk area for the foreseeable future, which Myriad didn't mind, or patrol together, which she did mind. They were also required to write formal apologies to the two enforcers they had arrested, explaining that they were wrong, stupid, foolish, and sorry for the inconveniences had caused for the two men as well as for the city as a whole, and then sign them.

It would be Myriad's first time giving anyone her autograph as a cape.

"I shouldn't have dragged you into that," Myriad said as they got into the elevator. "I'm sorry you got in trouble."

Vista was about to press the button to send them down when she stopped and turned to her. "No."

"What?"

"No. Stop. You are not responsible for me. If anything, I'm responsible for you. I've been here longer. I didn't 'go along with you,' I agreed with you. If I were on my own, would I have done the same thing you did? No, not really. I think I would have broken things up without calling the police, but then I would have wished I did. You did what you thought was right, I did what I thought was right, and heck, even Piggot did what she thought was right, so we're all right people running around in circles doing the right things."

Myriad let out a breath. Honestly she was more worried that Vista might blame her than she was about any punishment that the director might give them. "Is she always in such a bad mood?"

"Oh no, that was her in a good mood," Vista said, pressing the button to their headquarters.

"Really?"

"Yeah. She's always cheerful when she gets to throw the book at us. Gallant checked."

Ugh. Sadism was the worst trait for an authority figure. "What's her problem?"

Vista shrugged. "Maybe she just hates kids. Or capes. Or both. Gallant says that she's just more worried about capes abusing their powers than people without powers abusing their powers. You know, because they don't have any."

"But that ... that's dumb. You don't need that much power to abuse it. Piggot is more powerful than any cape in the city just because of her position." And the only cape Myriad knew who abused her power was Shadow Stalker, which Piggot ignored because she only did it as Sophia.

"Yeah, well, the whole PRT is designed to keep capes in check, even though the only capes they have any authority over is us heroes. You're just lucky you joined after that bank robbery a couple weeks ago."

The elevator door opened to the Wards HQ, and the two of them stepped out. "I keep on hearing about that. Kid Win got put on probation because of what went down, didn't he?"

"Yeah, he got the worst of it, but it sucked for everyone. We all got our pay docked to pay for the collateral damage we caused—and by we I mean Glory Girl who isn't on the team and doesn't get paid anyway. So I'm pretty much working for free until ... what year is it again?"

Myriad remembered Lisa telling her how heroes never made any money. "I'm sorry to hear that." Her apology sounded trite. Most apologies were, in her experience.

Vista shrugged it off. "It doesn't matter. I didn't join the team for the money."

"Then why did you?"

Vista stopped and looked up at her. "Do you want the whole story?"

Myriad hesitated, realizing how personal a question she had just asked. On the other hand, she had never been good at making small talk. And, more and more, she needed a reason to stay. "I do, if you don't mind telling me."

"Okay." She took a deep breath. "This ... this might take a while."

They reached Vista's room, and the girl led Myriad inside. Myriad had seen a few of the Wards' rooms, and they had all seemed utilitarian. Each one came with a bed and a nightstand, and the rest was up to whomever the room was assigned to. Gallant had a stand to place and recharge his armor. Kid Win's room was cluttered with bits and pieces of half-finished inventions. Myriad's room was even more austere, and used it only for a place to store her stuff while she was out in costume.

Vista's room, though, was different. It wasn't just a room she was assigned to. It was a room she lived in. Vista kicked a discarded pair of socks under her unmade bed, then picked a miniature couch off the nightstand and expanded it with her power until it was large enough to sit on. Pictures covered the walls, hundreds of them, of Vista and the rest of the Wards, both in and out of costume, smiling, having fun, or just being silly, a photo album on perpetual display.

Vista sat on her bed and took off her visor, and Myriad sat on the couch. "First of all," she said, taking a deep breath, "are your parents still together?"

Taylor shook her head. "My mom died about ... three years ago. Car accident."

Vista nodded. "Mine got divorced. I know that sort of thing happens to like half the kids in the country, but it was hard for me. Before that, I knew that no matter how bad things got at school or wherever, I could always leave it all behind when I went home, and even when my parents fought, I knew that they loved me more than anything." She rolled her eyes at her own naivete. "You know. Stupid kid stuff.

"Then they separated. My mom stayed where she was and my dad found a nice apartment downtown, and every one or two weeks I would pack my bags and go from one house to the other. It was ... inconvenient, but it was something I could deal with.

"They both started acting really nice to me afterwards. They used to both be really frugal and overprotective, but after the divorce they just let loose. Did I want my bedroom a different color? Sure! It was my room anyway, and painting it would be a fun bonding experience with Mom. Did I want to go to a concert? It was a school night, but my grades were fine anyway. That R rated movie I wanted to see? My dad wanted to see it too, and a little brief nudity was nothing a ten-year-old girl couldn't handle.

"I didn't mind it at first, not compared to everything else. Having a full wardrobe at each house meant that I didn't need to pack as much before trips, and at the time I thought that they were trying to make it up to me for getting me caught up with their issues. That was before I realized what they were doing. They were both trying to be my favorite parent, not because they loved me, but because they hated each other. Nothing would hurt my dad more than losing me, and nothing would hurt my mom more than seeing me choose my dad over her. My parents became enemies, my home became a battlefield, and me?" Her face twisted in disgust. "I became the weapon of choice.

"For a while I tried to be the mediator, to not play favorites, and let my parents know that I loved them both the same, but it sucked because whenever I complained about one to the other, they'd encourage me and tell me how the other parent never really loved me in the first place and the divorce was all their fault and that we were better off without them, and when I complained about my mom to my mom or my dad to my dad, they'd get so defensive and remind me that it was always my dad who was never at home or how it was always my mom who was always on our case to look good for the neighbors. I had two houses but no home, two parents but no adults, and I needed one solid thing in my life and it could not be me.

"Then I triggered. It must have happened in my sleep or something, because one morning I just had powers. After months of feeling like I was stretched between opposite ends of the city, I could stretch anything I saw. I joined the Wards because I needed to get away from home, and I met the team. Gallant was the absolute best and really helped me open up about what I was going through, which was what I needed then. Triumph was the team leader at the time, and when he saw what I could do he pushed to let me go out on patrol instead of shut me away to console duty and PR events, which was a huge risk on his part because at the time I had all the survival instinct of a lemming.

"Pretty soon I had friends, responsibilities, and structure here. The Wards might not be for everyone, but it was exactly what I needed. Even when Triumph graduated into the Protectorate, not much changed. The team was always there when I needed them, not just out fighting crime, but everywhere. I guess ... I guess the reason I'm on the team is because they are my time, the only one I have right now. And I wouldn't have it any other way."

Taylor watched her in silence for a moment, and her gaze drifted up to the pictures on the wall. They were all team pictures, but in a way, they were family pictures, too. She envied that. "Gallant said that you haven't ... come out to your parents yet." Was that the right term for it?

"I haven't."

"Where do they think you are all the time?"

"Well, right now my mom thinks I'm at my dad's house, and my dad thinks I'm at my mom's house. I visit them every now and then, and if they ever had a civil conversation with each other for two minutes they'd know something was up, but ..." She shrugged. "I've been doing this for two years now and they haven't noticed."

That ... that was messed up, but Taylor could relate in her own way. After her mom died, her dad had shut down for a while and she would sometimes spend several days at a time at ... at Emma's place, because even if it wasn't her home, it was at least a home. Her dad had been empty for so long afterwards that seeing him while knowing what he used to be like hurt.

It took courage for Vista to talk about that, courage to share her weakest moments. Not the sort of courage to get into cape fights with super villains, but something ... deeper. Something that Taylor needed right now.

She took off her mask and blinked owlishly at Vista until she put on her glasses. "Do you still want to know what my deal is with Sophia?"

Vista's eyes widened. "Sure. I mean, if you want to talk about it."

Taylor took a deep breath. "I first met her about a year and a half ago, right before I started high school ..."

WWW

A/n So I thought up Vista's trigger event several chapters ago, figuring that it had something to do with her parents' divorce. After I wrote this chapter, I found out that Ward actually goes into it in a lot of detail. The canon version isn't that different, but it does have more dogs in it. I'll try to be canon compliant in this story, but I've only read Worm.


End file.
